Best practice: Surveys

Where to start?

Our recommended way to create a survey is described below, step by step.

Start by creating a new draft (in “Surveys” – “Create”). You have three different choices here:

Brilliant Employee Survey
Start from scratch
Smart Pulse

Brilliant Employee Survey contains Brilliant's standard question package with our standard indexes of a total of 34 questions, included in 7 different indexes.

Start from scratch means that you put together your survey yourself with index/question packages or selected questions in chapters you create.

Smart pulse, or Follow-up Pulse, is a special type of measurement that you can read more about here: 📌 Smart pulse

Brilliant's recommended way to create a survey

First, consider which areas you in your organisation want to cover in your survey.

- If you want to have a holistic picture of your employee experience, we recommend the Brilliant Employee Survey.

- If you want to measure only one or a few question areas, or single questions, we recommend that you use Start from scratch as a starting point.

- If you want to follow up on previously recommended areas and insights that your teams have received from Brilliant via a previously completed holistic survey, we recommend Smart pulse.
Use the indexes and question packages that are available, regardless of the type of previously mentioned survey templates you have selected. You can remove and add questions completely as you wish.

A strong advantage of using already existing indexes/question packages is that you do not have to put together and build questions yourself. There may also be built-in logic for follow-up questions, which works best if added automatically. Some question packages (for example, "Abusive Behaviors”) have built-in logic with follow-up questions and enhanced anonymity when reporting.

You can read more about logic in general here: 📌 Logic
If you cannot find the questions you want in the existing indexes/packages, you can search for individual questions. These can easily be added to the chapters you have already chosen (for example, leadership questions can be added to the leadership index chapter), to create a good flow in the survey. This makes it easier for you as an administrator and for the respondents. Keep in mind that it is not possible to search for and add a question that has already been added to the survey.

It is also possible to create questions and your own question packages; read more about this her: 📌 Create questions / Question modules

Can I create copies or my own versions of Brilliant's standard questions?

At Brilliant, we provide access to a wide range of standard questions, which are included in our indexes and question packages. These are carefully designed with specific purposes and areas in mind.

As a customer, you cannot edit Brilliant's standard questions, but you can create a copy/your own version of a standard question if you need to. This new, own version of the standard question that you create will have the same question ID as the original question, and therefore be linked to any result history that you have. However, the new version of the question will not be included in any benchmarks that the original question is linked to.

It is worth noting that if you create a copy/your own version of a standard question, you will not be able to have two versions of the same question, with the same question ID, in one and the same survey. This is because the questions mentioned have exactly the same question ID, and will therefore be seen as a duplicate.

Built-in logic in question modules

Some of our question modules, for example "Abusive Behavior", have built-in logic. This means that logic will automatically be added to the survey draft when the question module is added. Question modules with the associated logic always works best if no adjustments are made to the questions or the logic that is connected.

If you make changes to such a question module, for example if a question is removed, the logic will not automatically adapt to this. It is therefore important to keep track and check that the logic is kept up to date, if you make changes to your question packages with built-in logic.

❗ Missing logic items always need to be fixed in one way or another. Such logic items can be easily recognized as they are marked in red, and you will be warned about them in notifications on the site where the questions for the survey draft is being handled. Generally "???" is written in these red-marked logic items, instead of the question that was previously linked there.