Running Employee Annual Surveys in Workday using OnSurvey

Buzz

Employee annual surveys are one of the most powerful tools organizations have to understand engagement, culture, and what truly drives performance. When done right, they help leaders make better decisions, improve retention, and build trust by showing employees that their voices matter.

OnSurvey helps organizations run employee annual surveys end-to-end inside Workday. From survey creation and secure distribution to analysis and action, all within Workday.

What Are Employee Annual Surveys

Employee annual surveys are organization-wide questionnaires designed to capture how employees feel about their work, leadership, growth opportunities, tools, and overall experience. Most organizations run them once a year to establish a consistent baseline and track trends over time.

Why annual surveys matter

Organizations use annual surveys to:

Measure employee engagement and sentiment consistently year over year
Identify strengths and friction points across teams, locations, and roles
Understand drivers of retention, performance, and burnout
Inform leadership priorities, talent investments, and organizational change
Reinforce employee voice by creating structured feedback loops

The real value of an annual survey isn’t the score—it’s the decisions it enables. The most effective organizations use survey insights to prioritize actions, track progress, and communicate transparently with employees.

Current Pain Points with Annual Surveys

HR practitioners highlighted the following challenges with existing solutions (e.g., Qualtrics, Survey Monkey, Lattice, Glint):

Disconnected Data: To send a survey via a third-party tool, HR must export a CSV of employee data (names, emails, cost centers, managers) from Workday or use a API based integration.
Context-Free Analysis: External tools don’t “know” your org structure. You cannot easily slice survey results by Matrix Manager, Supervisory Organization, or Compensation Grade without complex manual data mapping.
Multiple Security Policies: Annual surveys involve sensitive feedback. Managing who can see what—while protecting anonymity—is complex and often error-prone. Redoing the security policy in third party tools to ensure data compliance is duplicative work.

Introducing OnSurvey: Built-on Workday App

OnSurvey addresses these challenges by being built natively on the Workday platform. Unlike bolt-on solutions, OnSurvey stores all sensitive survey response data within your Workday tenant, governed by Workday’s robust security policies.

Core Capabilities

Native Workday Integration: Survey data joins seamlessly with existing HCM and Finance data for comprehensive analysis
Flexible Delivery Options: Send surveys one-time, on a recurring schedule, or triggered by workforce events
Authentication Flexibility: Support both authenticated and anonymous survey submissions
Multi-Channel Distribution: Reach employees via Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Workday Inbox

Creating Your Employee Annual Survey

A well-designed annual survey balances depth with focus. OnSurvey supports structured survey design with reusable templates and question libraries.

Typical annual survey sections include:

Engagement drivers (manager support, recognition, growth)
Enablement and tools (process friction, workload, systems)
Culture and belonging (psychological safety, inclusion)
Leadership and strategy (clarity, trust, direction)
Open-ended questions for qualitative insight

Sample Template sections in OnSurvey

Experience OnSurvey (Clickable Demo)

Meeting Employees Where They Work

Low response rates plague traditional survey tools. OnSurvey addresses this by delivering surveys through the channels employees use daily.

Slack Integration

Employees receive survey notifications and complete surveys directly within Slack. The native experience eliminates context-switching, driving higher completion rates. Install the OnSurvey app for Slack through the authorization link in your OnSurvey web app settings. OnSurvey is available in the Slack Marketplace.

Microsoft Teams Integration

Install OnSurvey from Microsoft’s marketplace, then configure through the Teams admin center. Add the app to your setup policies to ensure automatic deployment across your organization. OnSurvey is available in the Microsoft Marketplace.

Workday Inbox

For organizations where employees regularly access Workday, surveys appear as inbox tasks. Configure the OnSurvey Action business process to route surveys through Workday’s native notification system.

Email Distribution

OnSurvey sends emails from a configurable sender address.

Analyzing Responses with Reports, Prism, and Worksheets

Because survey data lives in Workday, analysis leverages tools HR teams already know.

Custom Reports

Create an Advanced Custom Report using the “Survey Responses” Data Source. Add filters to share responses for specific surveys, apply security policies, and join with any Workday data—employee demographics, organizational hierarchy, compensation, or performance.

Use standard and custom reports to track:

Engagement trends over time
Participation rates by segment
Heatmaps by org, location, or role

Prism Analytics

For organizations using Prism, survey responses become another data source for sophisticated visualizations and cross-functional analysis. Combine engagement scores with turnover data, correlate satisfaction with performance ratings, or segment results by any organizational dimension.

Blend survey data with:

Attrition and retention metrics
Performance and mobility data
Learning and development outcomes

Worksheets

Workday Worksheets provide a familiar spreadsheet-like interface for ad-hoc analysis. HR practitioners can pivot, filter, and explore survey data without requiring specialized analytics skills.

OnSurvey Demo Video

Best Practices for Employee Annual Surveys

Increasing Engagement

Multi-channel distribution: Use Slack, Teams, and email together to maximize reach
Optimal timing: Configure to send surveys when employees are most likely to respond
Personalization: Include recipient names and customize messaging for different populations
Mobile-friendly: Ensure surveys render well on any device (OnSurvey handles this automatically)

Benchmarking Results

Trend analysis: Compare year-over-year results to identify improvement or decline
Segment comparison: Break down results by department, location, tenure, or job family
External benchmarks: Use industry data to contextualize your scores
Statistical significance: Ensure sample sizes support meaningful conclusions

Tying Surveys to Company Goals

Align questions to strategy: If retention is a priority, include questions that predict turnover risk
Connect to OKRs: Track metrics that directly support organizational objectives
Executive sponsorship: Ensure leadership visibly champions the survey program
Resource commitment: Before surveying, confirm capacity to implement meaningful changes based on feedback

Reviewing Results and Mapping to Actions

Timely analysis: Share results within 2-4 weeks of survey close
Action planning workshops: Engage managers in identifying specific improvements
Prioritization framework: Focus on high-impact, feasible changes first
Accountability: Assign owners and deadlines to each action item

Closing the Feedback Loop

Employees who feel heard are more engaged. Demonstrate that their voice matters:

Communicate findings: Share aggregate results transparently (while protecting anonymity)
Acknowledge themes: Validate common concerns even if solutions take time
Report progress: Provide updates on actions taken in response to feedback
Continuous listening: Use pulse surveys between annual cycles to track improvement
Manager enablement: Equip leaders with dashboards and suggested actions to respond locally

Getting Started with OnSurvey

Ready to transform your employee survey program? OnSurvey provides enterprise-grade survey capabilities native to Workday, eliminating integration headaches while leveraging your existing security and analytics infrastructure.

OnSurvey is now available on the Workday Marketplace. Request a Demo.

OnSurvey is built-on Workday app, ensuring your sensitive survey data never leaves your workday tenant while providing the flexibility and analytics capabilities modern HR teams demand.