About Peakon surveys and how they work

Peakon's flexible survey approach allows organizations to run multiple survey schedules and frequencies at the same time. This will enable organizations to meet the differing demands internally, should some areas of the business wish to survey more frequently than others. For example, you may want to survey new-joiners more regularly than other demographics to give you greater insight into your onboarding process.

 

Organizations are able to launch as many surveys as they need, whether the intention is to maintain an automated cadence of pulse surveys, manual surveys every once in a while or even a one-time survey.

 

This article will provide an overview of: 

• Survey scheduling
• Who is included in the survey
• Question selection and frequency
• Survey status and timeline
• Sending the survey to employees
• What happens when a round closes

For the technical information and instructions on survey management, see Scheduling and configuring your survey.

Survey scheduling

Quick access: Administration > Schedules

The schedules area serves as the hub for scheduling and configuring Peakon surveys. Each company has a default Company schedule which contains all active employees of the company, however it is also possible to create multiple schedules, if needed (see Running multiple survey schedules simultaneously).

When data collection is enabled on a schedule, the schedule will automatically send out a survey on the survey start date, in accordance with the configuration on that schedule. When using an automated cadence, it will continue to automatically launch new survey rounds using the chosen survey frequency.

To learn more about scheduling your survey, see Scheduling and configuring your survey.

Who is included in the survey?

Schedule targeting will decide which employees the survey goes out to. By default, the company schedule includes current employees that are marked as active under the engagement toggle on their employee records, and their separation date has not passed. 

Further targeting (by using 'only including' or 'excluding') can restrict the survey target further, whether it's used on the company schedule or a custom schedule. When using multiple target segments, the system considers them with an "or" condition, meaning that it will include or exclude employees that match any of those segments. 

The number of employees displayed on a schedule indicates how many people currently match a target. Please note that when looking at the past survey activity, the numbers next to past surveys will display the number of people surveyed at the time.

To see which employees are included in a survey, go into Employees page and replicate the targeting used on a schedule. 

Question selection and frequency

The survey will include all questions which match both conditions:

• The overall category has been enabled under the 'Frequency' tab in the schedule
• The questions themselves have been marked as active

It is also possible to target questions, so that even if they are active, they will realistically only reach the targeted population within a survey. For example, excluding the new starters segment from the Reward question would mean that the question is asked to everyone except employees that are part of the new starter tenure segment. The order of questions is dictated by the question categories, see About survey and question frequency and how it works for more.

When surveying on an automated cadence, the system will ask all survey questions during each survey round, but not necessarily at the same time to all employees. This is to ensure that there is data on each driver from the very first survey round to start building trends, and any future survey rounds can build up on that. To read more about the question algorithm see Understanding the question algorithm. 

Survey status and timeline

Each open survey goes through three different stages. It is important to understand the soft close period versus the hard close period. See more below:

Status	Timing	Notifications	Dashboard data
Open survey	On the date of the survey launch, the survey officially opens at 00:30 in the timezone set in the schedule.  If no schedule timezone is set, the fallback order is: Company timezone set in the Account settings UTC timezone  The link becomes available to access via the app from this point onward.	Employees will receive an email/SMS/in-app/Slack notification when the send-out time starts. This is typically at 9:00, although it can be reconfigured in the schedule settings. The timezone used will be the employee record timezone. If no employee record timezone is set, the fallback order is: Schedule timezone Company timezone UTC timezone The first survey reminder comes halfway through the round, and the second comes 4 days after. If either of these dates is a weekend, it will be pushed the Monday after.	New survey feedback is entering the system in real-time. Scores are updating in real-time. Priorities from the previous round are not updating until the close of the current round. New comments enter the system in real-time or at the end of the round (this can be set on a per access control group basis).
Soft close	On the date of the survey close, the round will close at 23:59 UTC, prompting a calculation of driver priorities, topics and highlighted segments, about an hour later (at 01:00 AM UTC the following day). The survey will automatically hard close exactly two weeks after.  It is possible to hard close the survey immediately: Go to Administration > Schedules > Activity Click Hard close round next to the survey	Although old email links from the current round are still functional, no further reminder emails are sent. It is also not possible to add new employees to the survey during the soft close period.	Employees are still able to answer the survey, enabling people who've been away from work (e.g. they've been on holiday) to participate. This new data will not influence the selection of priorities, strengths, and topics, until the next time they are calculated (after the next round). This is because by this point action planning based on these insights can be well underway, and so a period of stability is needed. Although, given the small percentage of people who will answer after the close date, there is very little chance these would change.
Hard close	Two weeks after the soft close, the survey automatically hard closes, unless it has already been manually hard closed.	Old survey links for the latest round are no longer functional. Reminders are not triggered, and it's not possible to add new employees to the round.	No new data will be submitted following the hard close point

Sending the survey to employees

On the day the survey launches, notifications can be sent to employees via email, SMS, Slack or in-app. Additionally, employees who do not have an email address can complete their survey via a kiosk link, when enabled. To learn more about survey channels see Introduction to survey channels.

Employees who receive notifications will receive it at the scheduled send-out time, typically 9AM (unless reconfigured in the survey). When assessing in which timezone the system will notify the employee at 9AM, it will refer to the employee record timezone, which can either be set manually by an administrator or detected automatically from past surveys.

If no employee record timezone is set, the fallback order is:

• Schedule timezone
• Company timezone
• UTC timezone

The first survey reminder comes halfway through the round, and the second comes 4 days after. If either of these dates is a weekend, it will be pushed the Monday after. 

Although notifications are sent out as a group, when it comes to a large amount of notifications, they may be staggered over a short period of time. Additionally, employees in different timezones will receive their notifications at different times during the day.

What happens when a round closes

The survey round will have a set close date, most often this will be a week or two after the survey opens. The round will close at 23:59 UTC on its end date.

After the survey round closes, at 1:00 AM UTC on the following day, the dashboard will immediately show:

• The priorities and strengths Peakon recommends focusing on or celebrating (How strengths and priorities are calculated)
• Key comment topics (About Topics (NLP) and how they work)
• Highlighted segments (How highlighted segments are calculated)