How to create a survey theme

In this article we'll show you how you get started with survey themes.

Iris van den Bos avatar
Written by Iris van den Bos
Updated over a week ago

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Survey themes

Employee satisfaction is an important issue for many organisations. Within Learned, it is now also possible via the Survey module to measure this using various themes. From Learned, 18 themes regarding employee satisfaction and engagement, including a number of questions per theme are ready for you. These themes and questions are based on the Learned Engagement model. With this science-based model, we help you ask the right questions to get started measuring employee engagement right away. We also offer the Learned Engagement model as a downloadable product on the website.

The themes regarding employee satisfaction and engagement we have selected and developed are:

  1. Employee commitment to mission, vision and strategy:

  2. Opportunities for growth and development

  3. Internal communication

  4. Supervisor support

  5. Relationship with colleagues

  6. Teamwork:

  7. Recognition and rewards

  8. Work-life balance:

  9. Work environment:

  10. Workload management:

  11. Empowerment and Autonomy

  12. Job flexibility:

  13. Job Fit and Design:

  14. Meaningful work:

  15. Leadership

  16. Feedback and performance management

  17. Inclusivity and diversity:

  18. Customer driven and innovativeness

You can then start adding these themes to a template. Want to know how? Then read the following article: How to create a survey template.

Note: The topics you choose for a survey form the basis of the report. Therefore, these are the topics you can potentially improve on.

Create a new theme

As well as having 18 themes already defined in Learned, you also have the option to add your own. When you go to Surveys - Themes, you will first see an overview page with all the themes. Using the 'Create new' button, you can create a new theme yourself.

When you want to add your own theme, you enter a focus mode. You can fully focus on creating a theme here.

In step 1, you give the theme a name, an icon + colour and a description. Creating a theme includes an autosave.

Set up multiple languages

Within the Survey module, you have the option to send out the survey not only in Dutch or English, but you can also choose one of the other 22 languages. For example, if you employ employees whose mother tongue is not Dutch or English, you can choose to send the survey to them in another language.

For example: Suppose you also create the survey in Portuguese, and an employee has set this as their preferred language in their personal profile, the survey for this employee will appear in Portuguese. If someone has chosen a preferred language that is not available in a survey, we will look at the organisations default language and show it to the employee.

Note: You will have to add the translation for the chosen language yourself.

Want more info on how to add multiple languages to the company account? Then read the following article: How to set up multiple languages within company account.

Adding questions

In step two of creating a theme, you will then add the questions. You can add as many questions to the theme as you like. In fact, when creating the template, you can choose whether you want to add all the questions of a theme, or just a selection.

Question types:

When adding questions to a theme, you have six different question types to choose from:

  • Text area: With this, you ask the employee an open question.

  • Single: This is a question to which only one answer can be given.

  • Multiple: This is a question where several answers can be given.

  • Traffic light: This is a question where the employee chooses red, orange or green. Suitable for feedback questions.

  • Stars: In this question, the employee gives a rating. Suitable for general rating questions.

  • Smileys: For this question, the employee gives a sentiment score. Best used for questions related to emotions and/or feelings.

Reporting

Note: Only the traffic light, star and smiley questions weigh in the reporting. In the report, we show an average score per theme. Within a theme, stoplight, star and smiley questions can be added. You can see below exactly how the questions weigh in the results:

Traffic light questions

In doing so, we use the following breakdown:

🔴 = 0%, 🟠 = 50% and 🟢 = 100%.

Star questions

Depending on the number of stars you use in the question, it is distributed proportionally. For example:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ --> With 5 stars, each star equals 20%.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ --> With 10 stars, each star equals 10%.

Smiley questions:

In doing so, we use the following breakdown:

😩 = 20%, 😟 = 40%, 😐 = 60%, 😊 = 80%, 😄 = 100%.

Edit questions within a theme

You can also edit existing themes if you want to add an additional language, for example, or if you want to add or remove a question to the theme. Click on the theme and then click 'Edit' at the top right. You can also click on the 3 bullets to the right of the theme in the theme overview to edit.

Note: When you modify existing questions in a theme, these changes are reflected in the templates the question is part of. When you add a new question, it is not automatically added to the templates. So you will have to adjust this manually.

Note 2: A change in questions has no impact on a running traditional survey. Here, we look at the template at the time the traditional survey was published. With a Pulse survey, we look at the most up-to-date template every time a new pulse is sent out. Changes in questions are included in a Pulse survey. New questions are only included in a pulse when the template is updated.

Delete questions within a theme

You also have the option to delete questions within a theme. When you open the theme to edit, you have the option to delete queries in step 2 of the theme.

Note: When you delete a question within a theme, the templates to which the question was added are immediately updated. Deleting a question does not affect a running traditional survey. In a traditional survey, we look at the template at the time of publishing. However, in a Pulse survey, the deleted question will no longer be sent out at the next pulse. With this type of survey, we look at the most up-to-date template at each pulse.

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