Intranet adoption survey guidance

Background 

Adoption is an important area that often gets overlooked, in this post I discuss some guidance on reaching out to your users after launching your intranet. Connecting with your users and getting their opinion on the new tool will aid towards its adoption. Form their feedback you can assess what's working and what needs some work.

Creating a survey as part of your adoption work is often not given the time or effort to be as useful a tool as it could be. Spend time developing a survey that will yield actionable results rather than gain responses that just tells you the users like or dislike the tool. Getting responses that have detail will help you evolve the intranet into a tool that continues works for users and improve adoption.

Planning the survey

When writing your survey consider what it is you want to discover from your respondents. 

Are you trying to identify why adoption is low? 

Or to identify areas of the new intranet that require further work? 

It might be a combination of both. 

It's worth pulling together a small team to plan your survey. Two heads are always better than one. Sit down and discuss with your team the following:

1. Survey frequency

Consider planning how frequently the survey will be used. It maybe that you decide to run this survey annually. The benefit of creating a survey to be used annually is the ability to track progress and measure success of the intranet’s adoption.  In the early stages of your new intranet, you may run the survey more frequently (i.e., quarterly). 

When planning your survey, knowing the frequency of the survey should shape the questions you ask. If you will be revisiting on a regular occurrence and using to track adoption progress use quantitative questions that can be used to plot usage or experience over time.

2. Incentives

Typically, response rates to surveys will be low in proportion to the number of employees the survey is sent. Consider if you will use incentives to increase responses. A voucher, fun prize or charitable donation may increase response. 

3. Purpose or goal

The survey should be more than just about the new intranet so consider asking questions about the ways people work and the channels they use to find information and documentation. Taking this approach and getting a holistic view of the needs of your colleagues can help identify changes in working practice that happen over time and can determine how your intranet design evolve and continue to be a tool people will use. The more information you have on the people and how they use the intranet will only aid you in finding patterns and improve adoption of the tool. 

4. Target audience

You are probably looking to get responses from the wider business for the new intranet, but you may also want to consider additional questions or a separate survey for those that manage the intranet pages and sites (editors\champions).

To achieve this in the survey you send out to all you could ask a question to establish the role of the respondent (user\editor\owner), depending on the result the survey could add additional questions.

Another consideration to make is whether to make the responses anonymous. 

Benefits of capturing contact details of respondent’s:

• Contact for further information 
• Identify geographical or role-based issues. 

Benefits of anonymous responses:

• Can increase responses 
• Encourages more honest feedback from respondents. This can be valuable in getting true opinions of the intranet and usage from the respondents. 

5. Questions to ask

The questions you ask will be a balancing act between getting the information you need and being a pleasant experience for your respondents. If a potential respondent decides to contribute, they will not want a long complex survey where they must spend a lot of time writing responses. Ask a combination of open (free text) and choice questions. Keep the number of questions low but ensure each question asked help produce either a measure for you to track or an action for you to review or implement.

When discussing the questions to ask your respondents consider using your choice and rating questions as a way of capturing quantitative data that you can use to understand ways of working and track how these responses change over time (if you run the survey periodically).

For text questions these can be used to give the respondents an opportunity to give details on their perceived positives and challenges when working with the new intranet.

See Creating the Survey | Questions section for examples of some questions you might want to use in your survey. Use these as a starting place to open your discussion and decision on the question you might include. When creating the questions, you could also consider questions that enquire the following:

• Devices and software: You may wish to identify the device, operating systems, or browser the respondent is using. This may help identify issues with these that cause any issues the respondent feedback, like performance, missing content and more.
• Geographic location: If the survey is anonymous you may want to have a question around the respondent’s office location. These answers may identify geographic issues like poor performance due to office connectivity.
• Department: If the survey is anonymous you may want to have a question around the respondent’s department. These answers may identify if response rates from specific departments over time (if doing the survey periodically). It may also help you track ways of working for the departments, which can be used to influence ways you communicate to different areas of the business or focus education etc.
• Role: You may want to incorporate a question to identify if the respondent is a general user of the intranet or an Intranet editor\champion. If one of the later, you might decide to add additional question targeted at editors and champions. This then saves you running a second survey in parallel for these users. 

6. Survey response owner

Discuss who will own the process of reviewing and turning responses into action. If done correctly the survey can be time consuming as it will capture a lot of data that will need to be analysed and turned into statistics and actions.

A person(s) should be appointed to monitor and analyse the responses, then feedback to the team actions required to improve adoption. This is an important role in ensuring that when the survey is run the data captured is used to improve the intranet and drive-up adoption.

7. Duration

Run the survey for a short period (1-2 weeks). Response rates to surveys of this nature are generally low and extending beyond 2 weeks will not guarantee you more responses. But it will be a balancing act in allowing users time to respond.  

We often forget that potential respondents have a lot of work to do in their day and a survey will likely be low priority. Giving them a long deadline will push responding to the bottom of their list. Having a short deadline like 1 week will encourage responses.  

Also consider when you will launch the survey. Launching at a time of year when there is high annual leave may mean you need to run the survey longer to ensure you capture responses from those off at the time of the survey launch.

8. Survey tools

There are many survey tools out there that you could use to create the survey and the tool you use may depend on your comfort level. As you may know if you've read my blog before I am an Office 365 consultant so my preferred tools and ones I discuss will be part of the Microsoft suite but other similar tools are available.

If you are using Office 365, consider using Microsoft Forms to produce the survey. It is quick and simple to pull a survey together. It also means users will be able to respond on desktop or mobile, which could improve response rates. You could promote the fact users can respond on their mobile while their waiting in the canteen queue, meaning they can focus on work when they are at their desk and do the survey to burn time while they wait.   

If you use Microsoft Forms, I recommend creating the form as Group form so your team has access to it should you be on leave. The other benefit of using Microsoft Forms, is you will be able to use Power Automate to do various things like notify you in Teams of a response or to move responses to questions to a list in SharePoint.

9. Delivery mechanism

When publicising the survey use all communication channels available. Plan the mechanisms you will use and the people who need to be involved to make the survey a success. Consider:

• Intranet news
• Yammer communities
• Org-wide Team(s)
• Announcements in All hands\Townhall meetings
• CEO Blogs
• Office 365 Champions

If adoption of the Office 365 tools is low, then asking for responses on intranet news posts or a Yammer community alone may not reach your whole audience. Early on in your user’s adoption journey users may still be getting used to the new ways of working with Office 365. Many will still be stuck in their email for running their day-to-day tasks and communications. In these situations, you may want to run a small email campaign for the survey, alongside your Intranet news, Yammer communities and Org-wide Team.

In the any messages, keep it short and to the point. Allowing potential respondents to know the importance of completing the form and the deadline. Include a link to the survey.

In the message you may also want to communicate how completing the form will benefit them. For example, their responses could improve their job by making information more user friendly or you may be running a prize draw for responses (see 2. Incentives). 

10. Office 365 Champions

Along the journey of rolling out Office 365 and your new intranet you will undoubtably have recruited and trained Office 365 Champions. Some may specialise in supporting the new intranet. Utilise your champions as the resource to achieve success. During your adoption journey your champions are a key tool that is often underutilised. Consider:

• Asking champions to publicise the survey and importance of users completing it.
• Setting up sessions (interviews\workshops) with champions to give more detailed feedback on the new intranet and their users experience. 

A champion is usually part of a team or department and is also a user of the tools. They will be well positioned to give you feedback and to speak to your users.

11. Survey Results

Publishing the results of the survey is another opportunity to drive interest in the intranet. Knowing that responses have been received and are being actioned allows employees to see they have a voice and can help shape the tools they are using. 

The results might be published as a page on your intranet but be communicated with a link via your communication channels (see 9. Delivery mechanisms). On the page include:

• Roadmap for intranet changes
• Stats from the survey
• Provide opportunity for users to provide further feedback. 

You will undoubtable have some responses regarding challenges to use or see common issues. For these you could also include links to your help resources.

Creating the survey

Survey title

Using the name of your intranet is important so respondents know they are completing a survey about the intranet. Keep the title short and descriptive and fill in the detail using the description.

Survey description

Describing in a short paragraph the purpose of the survey and how it may benefit the respondent. Below is a simple example.

In this survey we will ask you a series of questions to help us understand your usage of the intranet and how it can be improved to be a more valuable resource for you and your colleagues. Please provide as much detail and examples in your answers to help us understand what we can do to improve.  

You could include a link to the intranet homepage either in the description or the accompanying message so users can click and look around if they have never used the site(s).

Questions

Out of your planning session you will have captured the purpose, frequency and other details which will influence the question you ask. Remember to keep the survey short and test answering the survey to see how long it will take to respond. Anything longer than 5 minutes may put respondents off.

Below are some example questions to get you started.

Question: How frequently do you use the new intranet?

Question type: Choice

Potential responses: 

• Once a week
• Once a day
• 1-2 times a day
• Other (Please specify)  

Purpose: Usage | Identify how frequently the respondent uses the intranet. Responses for this will inform the current usage for the respondent. If the survey is run periodically, this will potentially help you build a picture of how usage frequency changes over time. 

Result type: Quantitative

 

Question: Please describe what encourages or prevents you from visiting more frequently? (for example, is there too much\too little information? Is it challenging to find what you need?)

Question type: Free Text

Purpose: User Experience | Identify how the respondent currently interacts with the intranet and if it is a positive or negative experience. Using a free text question allows them to provide details that you should turn into actions. Review responses and look for common themes like challenging navigation or content issues. Record these and enter them on to your intranet change roadmap.

Result type: Qualitative

Question: What is your typical purpose for using the intranet? 

Question type: Choice

Potential responses: 

• Find out the latest news from the company.
• Download a document or template.
• Find information.
• Other (please state)

Purpose: Usage | Identify the respondent purpose for visiting the intranet. Responses for this will inform the current usage reasons for use. If the survey is run periodically, this will potentially help you build a picture of how usage changes over time. For this question you should allow multiple selection.

Result type: Quantitative

Question: Please rate the intranet on a scale of 1-5 (1 being poor and 5 being excellent)

Question type: Rating

Purpose: User experience | Identify the respondent’s current perception of the intranet. If the survey is run periodically, this will potentially help you build a picture of how perception changes over time. If the survey is not anonymous then you may also be able to track clusters of satisfaction, which may lead to you discovering areas of the business that require further support or improvements to the areas of the intranet they use.

Result type: Quantitative

Question: Please provide details on why you gave the intranet the score above. We are interested in knowing what we can do to improve the intranet to better suit your needs, so the more detail you provide will guide us in evolving the intranet for you.

Question type: Free Text

Purpose: User experience | Identify the respondent’s current perception of the intranet and allows them to voice challenges or positives around the intranet. Review responses and look for common themes and cross over with other question. Use these responses as a guide to potential actions you can record as change tasks, that will improve adoption. Record these and enter them on to your intranet change roadmap so users can see their feedback has been heard and will be acted upon.

Result type: Qualitative

Question: Are there any areas of the intranet you would like to see improved? Please provide details include links to specific pages or content below.

Question type: Free Text

Purpose: User experience | Identify the respondent’s current pain points on the intranet. Review responses and look for common themes and cross over with other question. Use these responses as a guide to potential actions you can record as change tasks, that will improve adoption. Record these and enter them on to your intranet change roadmap so users can see their feedback has been heard and will be acted upon.

Result type: Qualitative

These are just a sample of the type of questions you can ask and the reasons you might use them. 

Remember there should always be a purpose and output from the survey. Not turning responses into actions is a common downfall of using surveys for adoption. When agreeing and writing the questions you plan to use ensure they are questions that will yield a response that informs and\or delivers an action for a change you could implement. Review the Planning the survey | 5. Question to ask (above) section for guidance on other questions you could ask.

Survey results

One of the things I regularly see in companies is surveys are run but the time and effort is not put into reviewing the responses and turning those responses into actions or data.

• Set aside time in your adoption plan to review the survey results. 
• Record the data and track changes over time (if doing the survey periodically).
• Review the free text response looking for common themes and issues
• Turn the free text response in to actions (where applicable)

Companies often underestimate how time consuming a survey can be but the benefits of spending time to ask the right questions and reviewing responses can deliver insights into ways of working and potential improvements.

Summary

Hopefully, this guide gives you a place to start planning your survey and how to best use it to track usage and experience as well as record actions out of the question you ask. 

When creating a survey as mentioned throughout use the survey to yield output that you can build a picture of usage and perception but also to create actions for improvements.