If you’ve ever sent an engagement survey and then struggled to do anything beyond that, welcome to the club.

The average engagement survey response rate sits between 30–40%, so the feedback that does come often feels incomplete, maybe even contradictory. Those few responses and insights then tend to sit in a report that few people ever see, let alone do anything about.

Whether you worry about low participation rates, unclear responses, forgotten data, or all of the above, you still know that you need an ongoing employee listening program. One that’s built on consistent feedback, high participation, and a clear path from insight to action.

Because you know that your employees aren't fully engaged and that it’s hurting the business. and that real employee listening can’t be a once-a-year event.

Here’s how you build feedback and engagement surveys in Nectar to create a true employee listening program rather than sending one-off surveys that go nowhere.

Get responses instead of being ignored

The biggest challenge with surveys isn't building them. It's getting people to actually complete them. Most organizations are making culture decisions based on incomplete data.

Nectar changes that in three ways, giving you tools beyond basic survey builders.

1. Multi-Channel Delivery

Most survey tools rely on email — which gets ignored, filtered, or lost. Nectar reaches employees through Slack, Teams, SMS, email, and directly inside the Nectar platform. This matters especially for remote, hybrid, and deskless workers: In a 2023 Qualtrics survey, only 50% reported that they feel heard at work. Meeting employees where they already are dramatically increases visibility and participation.

2. Automated Delivery with Nectar Flows

Send the survey automatically through Nectar Flows. Deliver the announcement in advance (built with Nectar Comms), include reminders for completion, and involve managers through automated notifications. All without manual follow-up.

3. Incentivize Participation with Nectar Points

Unlike traditional survey platforms, Nectar lets you attach points to survey completions — turning participation into a rewarding moment, not another obligation. This drives higher response rates, ensuring the data you collect actually reflects your full organization. And why wouldn’t you want to send a tangible thank you to the people trying to make your company the best it can be?

When you stack multi-channel reach, automation, and incentives together, you no longer chase responses. Instead you build habits where giving feedback is easy, expected, and appreciated.

Analyze the responses instead of guessing what to do

Nectar Engage is part of an integrated Culture Suite (alongside Recognition and Internal Comms), so the gap between insight and action is smaller. You diagnose with surveys, act through recognition, and align your team with communications. You automate it all with Nectar Flows. So now you have one platform for managing employee experiences and engagement rather than stitching together three different tools (if not more).

Nectar's Engagement Survey covers 10 engagement pillars, giving HR teams a framework to ask about what matters most, and includes industry benchmarking:

1. Alignment
2. Senior Leadership
3. Manager Relationship
4. Recognition
5. Growth
6. Empowerment
7. Wellbeing
8. Belonging
9. Communication
10. Engagement

You already know something is wrong before a survey. The challenge is what to fix first. Nectar's analytics and benchmarking give you the clarity to act decisively rather than rely on gut feel.

Companies that act on employee feedback see 4x higher engagement and 2x lower turnover, according to Gallup. But acting requires data you can trust.

Nectar Engage returns results organized around those 10 pillars. You get a direct read on which dimensions of your culture are strong and which ones need attention — without being overwhelmed by a hard-to-interpret wall of data.

No more wading through a spreadsheet export or a confusing report when you have:

• An overall Engagement Score to track trends over time
• Heat maps to surface disparities by team, department, or location
• Pillar-level breakdowns to identify your highest-leverage opportunities
• Mercer benchmarking to compare your results against industry peers

Ask questions after the survey instead of assuming you have the full story

It’s not enough to gather heaps of feedback and assume you get what’s going on. Your surveys should be the starting point of additional conversations, even when the surveys are anonymous.

After all, there’s always more context to gather and you’ll always receive feedback that leads you to more questions than answers.

That’s why Nectar Engage gives you SafeTalk, a two-way anonymous chat that allows HR and leadership to ask follow-up questions, never revealing employee identities. Yes, most survey platforms collect anonymous feedback. Only Nectar lets you respond — anonymously — and actually resolve it.

To use this feature to your advantage, follow these tips. (Even if you’ll be holding small focus groups to ask general follow-up questions to build context surrounding feedback, this advice will still be useful.)

• Be genuinely curious, not interrogative
• Ask open-ended questions that invite detail
• Ask one question at a time
• Avoid asking for identifying details

Waiting for exit interviews to understand what's broken is too late. Frequent Nectar surveys with proper follow-up allow you to course-correct before you lose people.

Cover a wide (but related) set of topics

The topics you survey can’t be random — they must be rooted in the real reasons employees disengage, burn out, and leave. Research consistently shows that employees want to feel heard and understood. Without structured, regular feedback channels, their frustrations and ideas go unnoticed. And the problems underneath them compound quietly.

Custom surveys in Nectar can include multiple choice questions, Likert scale statements, open-ended feedback boxes, and slider questions. This allows you to avoid convoluted questions with dense phrasing and inconsistent scales.

Remember those 10 engagement pillars? This is where they pay off when running engagement surveys. Covering these interconnected themes — rather than random one-off questions — gives you a fuller picture of what's driving (or draining) your culture. And because these questions directly map to outcomes like retention and morale, the data becomes easier to act on.

With Engage, I’ve actually really loved this product of Nectar because it allows me to send custom surveys, and that’s been great because it keeps it all in one place. I was doing these surveys before in Google Forms, and when this was released, I switched over to Nectar. It’s a good way to incentivize people to fill them out — they get Nectar points for it.

Gabriela Ruiz Nieto

Droplet

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Gather feedback in multiple ways instead of doing one big survey

A proper engagement survey is a big deal, but you can’t forget about onboarding check-ins, monthly pulse surveys, quarterly surveys, and even eNPS surveys.

You can do all of this from Nectar Engage. You’ll get templates and guidance for:

• Engagement Surveys with Mercer benchmarking
• eNPS Surveys for consistent comparison
• Pulse Surveys to prevent survey fatigue
• Custom Surveys with flexible question types

Run these surveys in addition to 30/60/90 check-in meetings and stay interviews and you have a feedback goldmine.

Shift from disjointed feedback to clear signals with Nectar

Employee disengagement doesn't announce itself. It shows up quietly in declining productivity, unexpected resignations, and culture problems that feel impossible to diagnose. The companies winning at retention are the ones who listen early, act on what they hear, and close the loop before small frustrations become big problems.

Nectar Engage gives HR and people leaders the tools to do exactly that — with multi-channel surveys, incentivized participation, robust analytics, and a direct line back to employees through SafeTalk. And because it's built into the same platform as recognition and internal comms, you create a system where feedback drives action, and action drives trust.Curious to see how Nectar’s employee listening solutions would fit into your HR team’s plans? Schedule a Nectar demo.