Surveys for Collaboration

Large projects that involve a number of different individuals or departments can be hard to manage, especially if you are overseeing the project or you need to keep up to date on where others are on progress. Generally, most companies use progress reports that are considerably subjective, such as walking around to each employee and asking them how they’re doing on each project. It’s a system that is known for its failures, because not only can the employees fib about their overall progress, but sometimes the employees themselves won’t really know how far along they are because subjectively they may feel they have been working on it for a while. This can lead to a variety of communication problems that may ultimately lead to a project running close to or beyond the deadline.

Ideally, your company wants and needs a better way of making sure that each employee is completing their part of the project. That’s something you can easily do with a survey. Every day (or every week, depending on how the project is expected to move along) you can send a survey to each individual employee working on the project, asking them what’s been completed.

Eventually, this will lead to a database that contains information about every part of the completed project, and the database will be updated when more parts are done. Using the SurveyMethods system, it can even be used to notify other team members when some aspect of the project has been completed (or has not been completed) so that a follow up can take place. The survey designer would simply need to set the data to send an email when something has been answered, and instantly it will send an email message to those collaborating on the project, notifying them of the change in progress.

There are many advantages to using this type of progress report/collaboration method over traditional collaboration. Some of these advantages include: Live Monitoring : SurveyMethods offers a live online monitoring system that keeps up to date with answers to various aspects of the survey, and can be checked at any time to see what's been completed and what needs to be completed. Live monitoring allows you to spot employees that are not making enough progress, and view employees that have gone above and beyond.

It can also keep other individuals up to date on what may need to be done and what they may wait for. It's an efficient way to get answers all at once. Parceled Data : Generally, when you ask an employee if they feel they're close to completion on some aspect of the project, you'll get a vague answer because often the employee will not even be certain themselves how much more they have to go.

With a survey, you can parcel out the data to add specific details to each part of the project. Then the employee knows exactly what to answer, based on what they've done and what they haven't done. SMART Goal Setting : SMART goal setting is considered a more realistic method of goal setting that leads to better results, with specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely goals that others can shoot for.

Surveys with detailed information provide a makeshift SMART goal setting system that ensures those that fill out the survey regularly understand what they need to do next. Project Reminder : Similarly, this type of survey constantly serves as a reminder that some part of the project needs to be completed. For large projects that are spread out over a long period of time, some part of the project may be forgotten simply due to the nature of other work and multitasking.

The survey will continuously remind the employees and collaborators what needs to be done. Problem Notification : Using open-ended questions, your company can also monitor any problems that the employees themselves need to report. Realistically, it's not possible to ask each individual employee if they are having any issues – especially in a large project.

But if an employee needs some assistance they can either type out the problem in a box or click a button requesting your assistance, and you can set it up to receive an email if the button is clicked – heading over to them immediately and avoiding any delays. Accountability : Because the survey is sent out regularly and because status reports are constantly updated, this type of survey also keeps people accountable. Its strength is that it will consistently be checking and rechecking who is doing what part of the project, and your employees – in an effort to make sure they're not caught for slacking off – will presumably try harder to get each aspect of the project done faster so that they will be seen as hard working.

Realistically, this type of survey use – whole clearly less traditional than other types of surveys – will bring about greater productivity. The collaboration aspect will also provide a tremendous advantage, as each individual will know exactly what their role is, what other people need to complete, how the project is coming, and so on. From a management perspective it can be advantageous as well.

For example, if each component is as detailed as possible, and one isn’t getting done, it’s possible that the employees are unclear who is responsible for it. You can catch these problems early, because of the lack of progress in that particular area, and assign the work to the staff member that fits it best. It’s also a great way to provide information to upper management that may need to be kept up to date on overall progress, and it may help with managing customers as well, because customers can ensure that their needs are being met.

There are currently few other collaboration or data collection tools that provide this level of in-depth information that can help both the employees and those monitoring the project keep track of how the project is progressing. Here’s more on the power of survey collaboration .

The SurveyMethods system was designed for research, but we developed several features to make things like project collaboration possible. With online reporting, data input, automatic email sending when some data is received, and the ability to customize the survey in a way that best meets your company’s needs, you’ll find that things like project collaboration and progress reports can become much more streamlined and much more valuable through using this type of online reporting system. The idea of using surveys with large projects that require some type of project collaboration is a system that few people use, but is arguably considered more effective than traditional project collaboration monitoring. If you’re interested in finding out more about how the SurveyMethods system can help you with your business projects, contact us today, or sign up for an account with SurveyMethods.