What are best practices for using a Metolius survey template?

Explore best practices for using Metolius survey templates, including tips on customizing, organizing, and optimizing templates for effective survey results.

The framework of a Metolius survey is a key component to obtaining instant survey results, making it essential to follow this structure when creating your own surveys. Until the framework becomes familiar, and you are able to craft surveys that align with it, you can access templates designed with this framework in the Resources menu located in the main navigation bar across the top of the web application.

Two Steps to Maximizing a Metolius Template

1. Make sure the intention of the template aligns with your goal.

A goal is the reason why you are conducting the survey in the first place. If your goal is to improve employee benefits, you likely need to assess how your employee base feels about the current offerings, and therefore makes sense to find a template that has a similar purpose. However, that is only the first step.

See this article for more information on Goals and the Metolius assessment structure.

2. Customize the template to your exact needs.

In the example above, understanding how an employee base feels about the current employee benefits is the goal, so using the Metolius Employee Benefits template is a good place to start. Nonetheless, customization is key for creating a survey that will return the results you need to make actionable decisions. Here is what you should customize within each assessment template:

Questions - Each question asked gets you closer to the goal, review each question and make sure the ones included in the template align with your goal for the survey. Remove or reword any that do not. Add ones that do.

Placeholder Text - Metolius assessments are generic and will have text in the place of where proper nouns should go typically these are in brackets, for example: [Company Name], to make them easier to notice, but make sure to scan the entire assessment to make sure you have replaced all placeholder text with any proper nouns you wish to use. For example: Company, organization, product, or brand names.

Scalar - The scalar is the measurement you choose for your survey response data. Are you measuring from high to low, good to bad, best understanding to least understanding? Metolius offers a default scalar within each template, but make sure that the descriptive words and the number scale align with what will help you best understand your results. See this article for more information on the scalar.

System-Generated Emails - As named, Metolius generates emails to send to your participants at key interactive moments. When being assigned a survey, reminders to start or complete the survey, a thank you when completed, etc. Personalize these communications to ensure your participants are fully aware of what they need to know during their involvement with the survey. See this article for more information on system-generated emails.

The following features for customization are discussed in more detail in this article.

Introduction - Survey introductions are key to helping its participants understand the purpose of the survey and approximately how long it will take them to complete. This is a crucial element to customize as it may help determine if your participants chose to take the survey or not!

FAQs - Frequently asked questions can be added to your assessment to help answer any questions you think your participants may have.

Help Contact Info - Add contact information to the assessment in case your participants need to reach out with any concerns or questions not answered by the FAQs option above.

Progress Bar - A key element for longer surveys but useful for all survey types and sizes is the progress bar which keeps the participant informed on how far along they are in the completion process.