Editor’s note: Gloria Kopp is a communication manager at academic writing service firm Academized and guest editor for the Survey Anyplace blog. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared here under the title, “Increase your employee survey participation: 8 tips you need to know.”

Employee surveys are a rather taboo subject in most businesses. Ideally, you’re going to want a 100 percent response rate but this is normally not the case. An average industry sits around the 50 percent mark but some companies have managed to boost that to around 80 percent, sometimes even as high as 95 percent.

For some businesses, this level of participation is extraordinary and may seem like a daunting and overwhelming task but it’s not impossible. There are three main reasons why an employee may not participate in a survey.

  • The employee has been through several surveys and has not seen a change come from the results.
  • Some employees will have things they want to say about their place of work but will not want to be identified and punished for their points of view.
  • Finally, in a busy place of work the manager may not see the importance of the survey and not put enough emphasis on why it must be completed.

Whatever the case for your business, here are eight tips you need to know to boost those all-important participation rates.

1. Getting your management on board

The first – and most important – step you need to take is getting your management teams on board to see and share the importance of your surveys. During the stage where the survey is running, your managers must be highlighting the survey and its benefits to the employees.

The managers must also allow your employees enough time to complete the survey properly while addressing any fears of identification that they may have.

“For example, if Sally, a low-level worker has had an argument with her team leader over something she deems is unfair, or a rule in the company that has affected her, she needs to feel that her opinion can be stated in the survey anonymously. If the problem is reoccurring, there’s an obvious problem in the company that needs to be addressed,” says Vera Downes, a customer relationships manager at Australian Help.

2. Use accountability

Your managers and leaders in your company need to be held responsible for the participation rates in their own departments or branches. There’s no way around this point as your managers are directly in charge and have the ability to make the survey reach 100 percent.

The key to making this happen is by influencing your managers to know that the authentic participation rate is a direct indicator of their ability to lead and manage in their role.

3. Highlight the results from previous surveys

As mentioned in the intro, one of the biggest drawbacks of employee participation is employees not believing that the survey will have any effect on the company. This can be resolved by including results and statistics from the last survey and showing how the company has improved, based on these results.

One of the best ways to do this is not to just talk about the action when the survey is coming up or has just been completed. Aim to highlight everything that’s going on on a quarterly basis to make sure that the survey is always fresh in your employee’s mind.

As an example of one of the better ways to approach this, you could even use tools like Slide Share and Prezi to create presentations, allowing managers to talk through the businesses physical changes.

4. Promote your survey

It’s vital that you make your survey as accessible to your employees as possible. This may mean having it available online, in a paper format or even through a Web site that your employees can fill out at home on their own. The more accessible you make your survey, the better received it will be.

To make this really easy, you can use a survey maker which allows respondents to take a survey whenever they like, on their own mobile devices during their commute or at work on their tablet or laptop.

However, you can’t stop there; you’ll also need to promote your survey as much as you can. This means creating posters, sending out e-mails and using your managers to educate your employees.

Get as creative as your budget allows. You can also use tools to make this promotion content on a budget, such as Paper Fellows, whether it’s graphical or text-based media.

5. Create competition

If you have multiple branches, such as a supermarket chain, and you’re planning to run an employee survey, why not run an inter-branch competition to see which store has the best participation rate. You can include a prize for the best store, such as a meal out or a gift voucher for every employee and manager.

This is a great way to get everybody on board and ready to finish their survey as quickly as possible.

6. Clear communication

As with any aspect of the business world, communication will be the key to your success. Every meeting you have with your managers, every meeting they have with their team leaders and then down to their employees, as well as every phone call, e-mail and instant message in between needs to be focused and professional.

Be sure to allow any level of the chain to ask questions and be proactive in making sure all channels of communication are open for maximum participation.

If you don’t already use them, monthly newsletters can be a highly effective way to communicate with all levels in the chain of command.

7. Make it fun

This may be easier said than done but it’s important to get creative with your survey to make it as fun and as engaging as possible. Obviously, this will also depend on your business and the nature of your industry.

LAMMICO, a company who runs surveys, got really creative by offering out Tic Tacs as a thank you for their “commit-mint,” a survey that turned over a 90 percent participation rate.

8. Use incentives

This could be one of the most uncommon ways to highlight a survey as it can be very expensive but it does work. With simple, playful widgets like a digital scratch card, a slot machine or even a leaderboard to increase group competitiveness, you can create great results!

Offering incentives can help boost an employee’s desire to complete a survey but you can’t go handing out incentives to all employees unless you run a small company. Instead, why not state that every finished and authentic survey is an entry into a drawing where one big prize can be won?

Comes down to communication

As you can see, there are so many aspects that go into making an employee survey a success, many of which come down to communication and making sure that the people who are responsible, i.e., your managers, are on board. With the best forms of communication in place, you’re sure to see a rise in those all-important participation rates.