How To Invite Participants to OVS

Irrespective of which link you use (Public or Private), it will be valuable to consider your communication plan. In the “Engage” phase you already discussed this with the client. You will probably need three communications to the participating members during the data collection:

Heads-up
Survey Invitation
Reminder

Heads-up

Before the survey starts, someone should explain the project to everyone. Either the leader who commissioned the survey, or you as an outside consultant, could do this via email or in a meeting, depending on the size and structure of the organization.

Recap key points:

Why this is important (as defined in the Engage phase)

The importance of honest and clear feedback
Anonymity / Confidentiality
Timing of the survey and the close dates
How they will take the survey (e.g., “I will email you a link”)
The estimated time to complete (i.e. approximately 15minutes) and the requirement to complete the survey in one sitting without distractions).

Survey Invitation

This will most likely be an email either from the system, an organization leader, or you. This email will include the link to the survey, and repeat the points above. Here is an example:

Hello Organization Members!
In our continued commitment to improve, we have an opportunity to collect some solid feedback about the dynamics in our organization. We'll use this information to plan together how we move forward at XYZ Company.
Your thoughtful, honest input is anonymous, confidential, and important to me.
Please click this link to complete the online survey about our organization:
====> URL
Please provide your input by Thurs 12th. It will take you 10-15 minutes.
All of our responses will by anonymously put together into a summary report. We have an all-hands meeting scheduled on the 16th where we will review this together. Then we’ll then decide what, if anything, we want to work on for improvement.

or something like the following:

The OVS survey will collect feedback about the organization and how we’re working together. The purpose is to give us data so we can continue to improve.
Please submit your survey by _____<end-date>.
Go to this URL to take it online: <URL>

Three key points about the survey:
a)    purpose: this survey is intended to help improve the workplace environment to improve our effectiveness.
b)    confidentiality: no one will know whose name goes with which answers. This is totally anonymous because it is important to us that you say what you really think.
c)    next steps: a summary of collected data will be shared back with all the participants through _____.

The survey will take about 15 minutes, and we ask that ALL ____ complete one copy each.

Then, an independent nonprofit organization called “Six Seconds” will collate the data into a report to be shared with the leadership team.

Thank you for sharing your voice!
<signed>

Reminder

It is helpful to send a reminder, such as: “ACTION: Reminder that tomorrow is the closing date for our organizational survey -- if you have not yet completed, please do so now. Here’s the link: URL”

Note on Tracking:

At any time, you can log in and see how many people have completed the survey by looking in the “Questionnaires” column.

If you are using the “Private link” method, then you can click the “people” icon in the Quest.access column to see your list of participants. Here you can add to and edit your list, and send reminder emails.