How to Run a Know Your Team Survey

To build a successful team you need to build strong relationships with your employees. This can be done by finding out more about them as a person, their interests, their life experiences and what motivates them. One of the best ways to do this, especially with a large percentage of the population working from home, is to run a Know Your Team Survey, where you ask a series of quick questions to find out more about your teammates.

There are many benefits of running a Know Your Team Survey. Firstly, you will get to know more about your team's personal life and hopefully find some common ground. This will promote cohesive teams that take care of one another, improve internal communication and help facilitate a culture of teamwork. Moreover, asking your team personal questions will help them to engage on a personal level with the organization, which will drive positive engagement and improve job satisfaction. It is important to take a break from heavy performance-related topics, like performance reviews and goal setting, and spend some time getting to know the people that work with you.

One of the key focuses for HR department at the moment is improving employee engagement. The success of any organization is reliant on the output on its workers, and organizations that are capable of engaging and motivating employees will see the best results. To succeed in today’s highly competitive business environment, companies need engaged, motivated and proactive teams who are passionate about their organization.

Know Your Team Surveys fall under the broader umbrella of employee engagement surveys which serve to actively engage employees. This comes with numerous benefits, like making employees feel valued within a company, and consequently boosting productivity and performance. Companies with actively engaged employees perform better, and record lower voluntary turnover rates. They also tend to have better customer relations!

When setting up your Know Your Team Survey it is important to create a solid communications plan to help you achieve a high level of participation, as well as ensure maximum impact.

Creating a Know Your Team survey with PeopleGoal really couldn't be easier. This 'How-to' will take you through the necessary steps to get your survey up and running within your organization in a matter of minutes. The app template has already been crafted so that you can implement it straight away with the questions we have created for you, or the template can be customized in accordance with your exact needs using our simple, no-code workflow builder.

Follow the steps below to install and launch a Know Your Team survey in minutes:

1. Install the Know Your Team app template

2. Customize and configure the Know Your Team app template (optional)

3. Set the Know Your Team app permissions

4. Launch your Know Your Team Survey!

Let's get started.

1. Install the Know Your Team Survey App Template

• Open any workspace, then click Create a new app and select Store template.
• Select the Know Your Team Survey and click Add to your account.
• Select the workspace you want this app to belong to, then Install template.

We've already built a list of 5 open-ended questions with answer sections ready for you to get started with the survey right away. If you're running a Know Your Team survey for the first time, feel free to use these questions so you can start using the app immediately. Jump over to step 3 to learn how to set up participants and permissions for your surveys, or continue on below to customize the survey questions.

2. Customize the Know Your Team Survey App Template

To customize the questions in your survey, click the Template menu, then Edit template.

Using the easy template editor you can insert elements for different styles of questions - select boxes, written responses, sliding scales and more.

i. Edit existing elements

Elements are your individual form fields that make up your survey. These can be anything from text questions to rating selects, display-only fields or numerical calculations, and every element can be changed to suit your custom process and company culture.

• To change a field, hover over the right-hand side of the element and click on the three dots that appear.
• Select Edit element (your element will have a name such as "Select", "Description", "Rich-text area" etc). This will open up the element editor.
• Make any changes to the fields where you need and click Save change to update.

You should note that these changes only apply to that specific element. This means that if you change one element you will need to change any other questions to match this. But don't worry, to prevent you from trawling through every individual element there is an option to duplicate an element once you've got it set up to your liking.

ii. Duplicate elements

• Hover over the right-hand side of the element and click on the three dots that appear.
• Select Duplicate element and an exact copy will be created below.
• Edit the duplicated element to change your question text, and click Save changes to update.

iii. Reorder elements and sections

Reordering is very straightforward - simply click and drag to change the element or section order.

• Hover over the left-hand side of the element (or section title) to click and drag your element or section to its new location.
• To move an element to a different section, hover over the right-hand side and click the three dots that appear.
• Select Change section and choose the new section you want the element to belong to.

iv. Create new elements and sections

At the bottom of each section, click Add element and select the element type you want to insert.

A new element that's useful to add to your first section is a display-only Description or Rich-text area. You can use this to remind employees and managers of the purpose of taking engagement surveys, or give instructions on how to complete the survey.

To add a new section, scroll to the very bottom of your template form and click Add section. Then click and drag your new section to where you want it to sit in the survey flow.

In this example, we demonstrate how you can add a section where the person filling in the survey can add their comments about additional information they would like to find out about their team in future surveys.

3. Set the Know Your Team app permissions

Permissions control the access to your app within your PeopleGoal account. Different levels of access will determine to what extent users can create/edit surveys.

• Set permissions by clicking on the Settings menu, then expanding the Permissions section.
• Click on Explain permission types to understand the access that each permission gives your account users.

i. App-wide permissions

For Know Your Team Surveys, we'd recommend you set the permission to Create and view. This will allow employees to create surveys for themselves, and also be able to see their colleague's survey responses.

iii. Specific permissions

• Assign a specific permission by selecting Configure specific permissions.
• Under "User permissions" click Add user.
• Type your colleague's name to add them to the permission list. In the "Permission type" column, select which permission level to give them.

If, for example, you have a specific team that you intend to grant permissions, then under "Team permissions" click Add team.

Just as with "User permissions", type the team's name to add them to the permission list. In the "Permissions type" column, select which level to give them.

4. Launch your Know Your Team Survey!

You're now all set to go! With your questions decided, you can start to run the survey in-app which will attach employee names to each survey.

i. Start a New Know Your Team Survey

• To start a survey for yourself, select your own name.
• To start a survey for individuals, click Select user(s) and search for individual employee names.
• Or, click Select team(s) of users to kick off surveys for entire user groups. You can select your Company team here to start a survey for everyone in the account.

ii. Schedule Know Your Team Surveys

You may want to schedule a survey for a future date, or even setup recurring surveys so that your team can update their information and preferences. We suggest running this type of survey annually.

• On the App homepage, select Add ..., then click Schedule.... This will create a content box above the New Know Your Team Survey button.
• Hover over the right side of the box and click on the pencil icon.
• Here you can enter information for the schedule description that can be displayed on the dashboard. Select the "Show on dashboard" toggle to enable this.
• Then click on Add event and write in the relevant information. Here you can set the date for the survey, a reminder notification, toggle if the survey is recurring and how frequently they will be set.
• You can schedule surveys on a fixed date like the first Friday of the month, or on a date relative to an employee profile field, like their start date.
• You may also want to select the toggle for "Automatically create new Know Your Team Survey" to automate the process. Then click Select participant to set the respondent to the Employee participant.
• Be sure to select Save changes before leaving each page.

5. Next steps: Custom Reporting

Once your survey is underway, you will want to track and analyze the app data. Every single element from the survey is stored in the Data view tab, which can be accessed by clicking Data from the app's menu bar.

Every data point from the Know Your Team survey is captured in the Data table. Each row represents an item created by a user in the app, and the columns are the different elements inputed by the user. Your default view shows every data point in the app, but you can filter and sort the spreadsheet to align with your needs. Check out our App Reports and Data View article to learn how to work with the data and create custom reports.

Once you've got your Know Your Team survey up and running, take a look at other apps you can install within your Engagement workspace. We recommend running a regular employee engagement survey to find out how satisfied your employees are with their working life, team relationships and the company. Implementing pulse surveys will also help you to get more current and up-to-date data regarding employee satisfaction and motivation. Additionally, employee wellbeing surveys are important to determine the mental, social and physical health of your workforce. You can find all of these and more in our App Store.

Don't have an account yet? Book a demo to find out how PeopleGoal can help you improve employee engagement with surveys like the Know Your Team survey.