How to Increase Employee Survey Participation Rates

Every employee survey round starts with the same swell of hope. You’ve built a great set of questions, run your Comms 101 Playbook, and encouraged your workforce to bring their best feedback. 

But a week later, another round wraps with only a handful of responses. A huge portion of your workforce is still holding out, and worse: you don’t have enough data to draw conclusions, let alone drive change. 

Sound familiar? 

It’s a big letdown. Low survey participation can skew your data, mask broader cultural issues, and make your employees feel unheard. 

So, let’s explore what’s driving low participation, why it matters, and how to fix it. 

Average vs. Good Participation Rates: Finding Your Benchmark

Best estimates put the average survey response rate anywhere between 30% and 60%. And sure, it’s a great target that most organizations aim for.

But here’s the thing: Your survey response rate is more than just a participation statistic — it indicates how employees feel about your entire feedback process. The number alone can’t tell you much without added context. 

A low response rate could indicate issues with survey design, accessibility, trust, or timing. A high one might look better, but it can still mask issues — especially if the feedback is incentivized or transactional. 

The main thing that separates “average” from “good” survey response rates is whether that data feels representative of your organization. And that can vary hugely depending on your industry sector, office location, culture, and workforce composition.  

Let’s look at a few examples: 

• A 60% response rate may seem solid… But breaking that number down, you see that 80% of your responses came from desk staff, while just 5% came from field workers. 
• A 90% response rate seems like a win… But nobody from your international offices participated, meaning key insights and experiences are missing.  
• A 40% response rate falls well below your target… But you’ve gathered rich, representative data and qualitative insights across teams, roles, and regions. 

Your survey response rate is a great metric for gauging how well your feedback processes are working overall. But used alone, it can’t tell you if you’re hearing from the right people or how you need to act. 

How to Calculate Your Survey Response Rate 

To boost your survey response rate, you need to know your starting point. Calculating your survey response rate gives you a baseline and a way of tracking progress over time.  

Use the equation below to calculate yours: 

Survey response rate = (Number of survey respondents ÷ Number of people invited to take the survey) × 100 

You can use this formula to calculate the response rate of a single survey. But for greater accuracy, look at your response rates for the last few survey rounds — or calculate your average over the past year. 

Then, use this data to help you track patterns in employee participation, such as: 

• Does participation drop during certain times of year, such as during the holidays or quarter-end? 
• Are any teams, departments, or office locations consistently participating less often? 
• Do longer surveys have a lower participation rate? 

Spotting these trends will help you plan, time, and target your surveys more effectively for maximum reach.  

Key Factors that Impact Survey Response Rates 

Survey fatigue, design, and length are all key players as to why your employees opt out of giving their feedback — ones we’ll get to in our best practices section in a minute. 

But beyond format and flow, there are a few deeper root causes that could be driving your less-than-stellar participation rates: 

• Employee engagement: It might sound a bit meta, but one big reason employees don’t respond to surveys — particularly engagement surveys — is because they’re disengaged in the first place. When people feel disconnected from their company’s goals, their motivation tanks — and with it, their willingness to share feedback. 
• Lack of psychological safety: Trust and psychological safety are critical for honest feedback. If your employees don’t trust that their data will remain anonymous or be used without judgment, they’re less likely to want to share. A single bad experience — like a manager sleuthing out which team member left them bad feedback—can shut down participation completely. 
• Limited access to survey technology: Some employees, particularly deskless workers, may lack access to email-based surveys, making it difficult to engage. If you rely on communication channels that employees don’t commonly use, participation rates will inevitably decline. 
• Lack of follow-through: When feedback goes into a black box and employees don’t see any changes or action, it communicates to them that their voices don’t matter. 
• Organizational change: During times of upheaval and uncertainty, like layoffs, mergers, or restructuring, employees are likely to feel more anxious and guarded. This can impact their desire to speak up. 

How to Increase Employee Response Rates: 4 Best Practices

To boost survey participation — and get feedback that’s actually useful — you need to get specific about your survey design, delivery, and messaging.

Here are four best practices to help you drive meaningful participation.

1. Design a Survey Experience That Matches Workers’ Needs

If your feedback survey format and user experience don’t match how your employees work, they’re unlikely to go the extra mile to fill it out.

For example, field-based workers — like delivery drivers or maintenance crews — are constantly on the move. Their work often involves working across different worksites without access to a computer.  

For this group, your survey delivery needs to be effortless and quick — think push notifications, a mobile-friendly experience, or survey tablets in satellite offices or hubs.  

To reach your entire workforce more effectively, you need to design a survey experience that meets them where they are — literally. Use the following questions as a guide: 

• Are our employees mainly desk-based, field-based, or a mix of both? 
• What is our overall average response rate? How does this vary by office location, role type, or work environment (for example, in-office or field-based)? 
• Are we using simple and inclusive language? Have we translated or localized surveys for non-native speakers across our operating regions? 
• Do employees have consistent access to data, Wi-Fi, or devices while working? 
• If not, are there locations where employees usually gather? 
• Are there shift patterns or time constraints that make survey participation harder? 

2. Keep Surveys Short and Sweet

One key reason employees don’t participate in a feedback survey is its length. Employees are busy. And when a survey drags on with endless questions, clunky formats, or eats into their schedule, they’re more likely to check out.

So, what are the sweet spots for survey length?

A 2020 marketing study found that the optimum time commitment for any online survey is between 10 and 15 minutes.

And when it comes to actual completion rates, an analysis of 267,564 survey responses found that fewer questions translates into better participation. Surveys with one to three questions yielded an 83% completion rate, while surveys with nine to 14 questions only yielded 56%.

To keep participation and completion rates high without sacrificing the data you collect:

• Preview the time commitment: In your launch email and internal communications, tell employees upfront how long the survey will take. Setting clear expectations lowers the barriers to entry.
• Rethink the annual survey: Long, once-per-year surveys try to cover too much ground at once — and 50 questions in, they become a slog for your workforce. Instead, try for shorter feedback cycles with fewer, more focused questions, such as pulse surveys.
• Schedule in time for feedback: Encourage employees to block a recurring time in their calendars to fill out their survey when each round launches — especially if your survey rounds are further apart.

3. Automate Delivery to Boost Completion Rates

A great survey experience matters. But if you don’t match that with a great delivery strategy, your efforts could ping in your employees’ inboxes at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, only to be buried in an email snowdrift by Monday morning. 

Participation is driven by the right blend of consistency, timing, and delivery channel. If your workforce doesn’t know when to expect the survey or where to find it, they’re unlikely to engage. 

And if you only send a survey once in a blue moon, it could create skepticism around what you’re actually doing with the results.

To make your survey stick, you need to create expectations around when, how, and where your employees will see their survey link show up:

• Create a consistent survey cadence: Set a cadence (weekly, monthly, or quarterly), and stick with it. Set a consistent delivery time and day that aligns with your organization’s overall schedule, such as Monday at 9 a.m., or the first working day of the month.
• Localize your delivery: If you’re working across different time zones, you can adjust your survey delivery workflows to match other teams’ working hours. This will maximize your chances of reaching your broader workforce.
• Automate participation nudges: As your survey round is about to close, round up any last participants with an automated email nudge. Paylocity’s Employee Voice helps teams do this efficiently at scale, with workflows to automate survey delivery, reminders, and results.
• Extend your reach: Use internal messaging platforms, such as your company Slack channel, mobile push notifications, employee intranet, and newsletters, to signpost your survey for those who might have missed it. Remember that less is more—a short, well-timed reminder will do more to boost participation than spamming your message everywhere.

4. Lead With Purpose, not Prizes 

When survey participation rates start to drop, incentives seem like an obvious fix. But should you offer incentives to reward employees for completing a survey? 

While research has repeatedly shown that financial incentives, like cash prizes and gift cards, can boost survey participation rates, it’s not a long-term strategy. This is because when you offer a reward for feedback, people have their eyes on the prize — not on sharing something meaningful. 

In short, your survey becomes a transaction, not a trust-building tool.  

Instead of focusing on incentives: 

• Clarify survey purpose: Clearly communicate how previous surveys have led to real changes that directly impact your employees.  
• Address concerns: Offer regular opportunities — such as monthly office hours — for employees to ask questions or give feedback on survey anonymity, accessibility, or how survey data is used. This starts your survey process from a place of trust and transparency.  
• Communicate your actions: Show the impact of feedback in real time by regularly sharing survey results and your plans to act.  
• Offer rewards that reflect your culture: Consider offering non-financial incentives or perks for high-participation segments, such as extra paid time off, volunteer days, charitable donations, or learning stipends.’