Employee Insights
Gain Real-Time Employee Insights with Pulse Interviews

As an HR manager, staying connected to your employees' experiences, challenges, and engagement levels is crucial for driving retention and performance. Pulse interviews offer a powerful solution to gather continuous, targeted feedback that enables you to make data-driven people decisions. Here's how implementing pulse interviews can transform your employee listening strategy.

What are Pulse Interviews?

Unlike lengthy annual engagement surveys, pulse interviews are short, frequent employee questionnaires focused on specific topics relevant to your current priorities. Typically containing 5-15 questions, these interviews give you an always-up-to-date view of employee sentiment and allow you to quickly identify potential issues before they lead to turnover.

The Benefits of Continuous Listening

Pulse interviews offer significant advantages over traditional feedback methods:

  • Improved retention: Employees who feel heard are 4.6x more likely to feel empowered to do their best work (Beheshti). Regular pulse interviews ensure your people consistently have a voice.
  • Real-time insights: Stay on top of engagement trends, reactions to new initiatives, and department-level perceptions as they develop. Over 40% of employees who voluntarily left their jobs say their departure could have been prevented, but little was done by a manager or leader to proactively discuss how their job was going (Tatel).
  • Targeted action: Pulse interviews enable you to measure progress on focus areas from previous surveys and gather feedback on specific programs. This supports targeted action planning to continuously enhance the employee experience.

Best Practices for Impactful Pulse Interviews

To get the most value from pulse interviews, follow these tips:

1. Keep it short and focused: Aim for 5-10 questions, concentrating on topics that align with your current people priorities.

2. Communicate transparently: Share the purpose of the survey, how results will be used, and the findings with employees to build trust.

3. Take visible action: Implement changes based on feedback before sending the next survey to show employees their input drives real improvements.

4. Use a mix of question types: Combine rating scales and open-ended questions for a balance of quantitative and qualitative insights.

5. Leverage multiple feedback channels: Complement pulse interviews with focus groups and always-on listening tools like internal social platforms for a complete picture.

Harness AI to Streamline Your Feedback Processes

Implementing an effective pulse interview strategy can be time-consuming, from developing questions to analyzing results. That's where an AI-powered tool like Colleva's Employee Insights can help. With Colleva, you can:

  • Easily deploy pulse interviews focused on key moments that matter like onboarding, post-training, and project milestones  
  • Receive AI-generated interview summaries and recommendations to quickly spot trends and areas for improvement
  • Customize question sets to target your specific feedback goals while leveraging best practices developed by industry experts
  • Track progress over time with real-time dashboards and analytics

By adopting a data-driven, agile approach to employee listening with pulse interviews, you can proactively design an employee experience that boosts engagement, performance, and retention. The key is keeping surveys short, targeted, and action-oriented, along with leveraging AI-powered tools to efficiently transform feedback into insights.

References

Beheshti, Naz. “10 Timely Statistics About The Connection Between Employee Engagement And Wellness.” Forbes, 27 Sep. 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/16/10-timely-statistics-about-the-connection-between-employee-engagement-and-wellness/  

Judd, Scott, et al. “Employee Surveys Are Still One of the Best Ways to Measure Engagement.” Harvard Business Review, 14 Mar. 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/03/employee-surveys-are-still-one-of-the-best-ways-to-measure-engagement

Mahan, William. “Top 5 Insights from Pulse Interviews & Employee Feedback Strategies.” Work Institute, 19 Aug. 2022. https://workinstitute.com/blog/top-5-pulse-interview-insights/  

Tatel, Corey, et al. “42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored.” Gallup, 10 Jul. 2024. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx  

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