What’s actually motivating employees to complete company surveys?

Surveys can be a really valuable tool for gathering all types of data to support your business. In the context of employee experience, they are essential for understanding engagement levels, workplace sentiment, and team needs across the organization. Whether sending them out to new hires, tenured leadership, or remote teams, you can gain a lot of valuable insight when you structure your surveys the right way.

But here’s the challenge. Surveys can take a lot of time to fill out, and most people just aren’t that generous with their extra time. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t apply practical strategies to help motivate your surveyors to answer a few questions.

Below, we’ll cover the primary motivation factors most individuals have today when filling out surveys so organizations can improve response rates and generate stronger talent insights.

Employees Want to Know Their Opinions Matter

Most people want their ideas or opinions to be heard. But if survey questions don’t really line up with their interests or aren’t overly relevant, then you’re not likely to get much in the way of cooperation.

In employee listening programs, this directly affects psychological safety, trust, and long-term retention.

For example, a frontline employee, a mid-level manager, and a new hire each experience the workplace differently and should receive role-appropriate questions that reflect their day-to-day reality. When you take the time to really think about your audience and make sure that survey questions are relevant to them, you’ll get a lot more value from the data you collect.

Better Personalization

Taking a survey rarely tops anyone’s to-do list. So, when you’re given a survey that is overly structured or looks like it’s just been sent to hundreds or thousands of others in the same format, it can feel like you’re just another number.

This is why it’s important to put a certain level of personalization into the surveys before they get sent out. Aligning surveys with key employee journey moments—such as onboarding, leadership training, internal mobility, or career development—significantly improves participation and reduces disengagement. Even something as simple as addressing individuals by their first name, introducing progress bars or badges, or making the questions based on their own unique experiences within the organization shows that you’ve taken the time to personalize the information and make it as relevant as possible to participants.

Being Rewarded For Their Efforts

You want to keep in mind that your employees value their time, and you should too. While asking for quick feedback after a training session or about a new benefits package is innocent enough, you want to consider how much time this initiative may cost them.

If you’re expecting individuals to stop what they’re doing to answer a 45-minute survey without any type of reward or incentive, you’ll likely not get a lot of responses. However, by offering something like a gift card or another small monetary incentive, it shows that you appreciate the time that your participants are putting in.

In many organizations, linking incentives to existing recognition systems—wellness points, internal rewards, or learning credits, reinforces a culture of appreciation rather than simply collecting responses.

This can also help you to get more valuable feedback, since participants will be more likely to put in the extra time needed to complete the survey accurately, instead of just providing random answers as quickly as possible.

Knowing Privacy is Taken Seriously

It’s important to recognize that most people, rightfully so, are pretty guarded when it comes to the information they give out online. So many companies today fail to separate identifiable data from anonymous feedback, leading to employees fearing some form of retribution from management.

Remember that if your survey participants can’t trust you with their data, then they’re less likely to be too accommodating when it comes to answering personal questions. Make sure you’re explaining to them clearly what the information you’re collecting is for and allowing them to opt out of certain activities, such as allowing the information to be shared with third parties.

Within HR, transparent data-governance practices and a clear explanation of anonymity protocols help employees feel safe, and honest responses lead to stronger, more reliable talent insights.

Comparing Results With Other Surveyors

Most people can be naturally curious about how their opinions stack up against their peers or industry standards. This type of social comparison can be a strong motivator for some people.

When someone finishes your survey, don't just give them a "thank you" screen. You might want to consider giving them a real-time view of the aggregated results you’ve collected when applicable. You could show them statistics like, "You're in the 15% who believe this needs to change," or "85% of people felt the same way you do."

In organizations with robust people-analytics systems, this mirrors internal benchmarking, team-to-team comparisons, engagement score trends, and EX dashboard insights, which strengthens the sense that employee input drives meaningful change.

This makes their contribution feel like it’s really being evaluated by the business and is useful.

Live Counter Responses

You might be surprised, but having a simple, real-time survey response counter can actually encourage more survey recipients to leave a response. This is because this tactic, when executed the right way, helps to create a FOMO effect, or “fear of missing out.”

Seeing a number like "1,342 responses collected so far" can help to create a sense of urgency. It also shows that colleagues are actively participating and that the initiative is a company-wide priority.

When framed as part of a broader engagement initiative, real-time counters also create a sense of collective involvement, an important driver of participation in large employee listening programs.

Managing Expectations Upfront

You want to keep in mind that individuals are inundated with survey requests from all types of sources. While some might be a quick two or three-question questionnaire, others can feel like you’re applying for a mortgage.

One of the most effective ways to get more results from your surveys is to help manage expectations from the very start. The last thing you want is for someone to start taking a survey, only to find that they quit it prematurely because they didn’t realize how long it would take. Or even worse, the first half of the survey provides honest feedback, while the second half gets rushed through and provides little value.

Be specific about the format of your survey, how long it should take, and if you plan on providing an incentive for participation.

Setting expectations early also helps reduce survey fatigue, one of the biggest barriers in today’s workplace, and results in more consistent, meaningful responses.

Make Your Employee Surveys More Effective

Surveys are a valuable tool for gaining helpful insight, but they only work if you can guarantee a high response rate. By applying these strategies through an employee-experience lens, organizations can strengthen their workplace culture, amplify employee voice, and collect deeper talent insights that support better leadership decisions.

About The Author

Cindy is passionate about the incentive industry. In addition to her role as Vice President of Strategic Partners here at Tango, she is a Certified Professional of Incentive Management who proudly serves on two industry boards. When she’s not working, Cindy enjoys spending time with her family—including three cats, two dogs, and a horse—and sharing her love of nature as a Nebraska Master Naturalist.