Running an Engagement Campaign

Complete guide to running a successful engagement campaign start to finish

Brian Deyo avatar
Written by Brian Deyo
Updated over a week ago

Running engagement campaigns is a critical component of your yearly cycle of understanding your employees so that you can effectively lead and foster their health and thriving.

Use this guide and linked resources to ensure you can effectively create, set up, kick-off, and manage your campaign.

Create Your Campaign

The first step is to create your first campaign. This is done from the campaign list where you land initially as a user of the engage platform. Simply click "Add Campaign" and one will be created in a draft state with a placeholder

Repeated Assessments

If you want to automatically have the next assessment ready for you to run in the future, you can set the campaign to repeat. This will create a copy of the campaign once it closes and set the start date the number of days in the future you indicate in the setting.

The Engagement Admin and Organization Admins will get a reminder about the scheduled assessment thirty days before the start date. You can use the auto scheduled date or reschedule to a date that works best for your organization.

Selecting your Assessment Cadence

The Engagement Admin and Organization Admins can update the preferred cadence for the organization by going to Settings > Assessment Settings. Click on the Organization Details section and update the Cycle Duration. You can choose to run an engagement assessment every 90, 120, 180, or 365 days.

Select Filter Group for Comments

To protect confidentiality, open ended question answers collected from any survey in the campaign can be filtered by one group type. From the campaign detail, select the group type you would like to view comments by. This cannot be changed after a campaign starts.

Add Surveys to the campaign

Every campaign must have at least one survey. You can add a survey by clicking on the "Add Survey" button in the Surveys section. Each survey will appear in the same user experience for employees in the order set in the list below. Surveys can be previewed when they are added or by clicking the three dot menu and viewing them.

Update/Add/Remove Campaign Notifications

When you set the start date for your campaign, we will automatically add 5 reminder notifications. These are notifications that your employees will get at the scheduled time. Only non-respondents will be sent reminders. This is the default and recommended cadence. Organizations using this cadence average an 82% response rate on our platform.

You can also set the Campaign Notification Type for the campaign. This will determine how the reminder notifications will be sent. You can choose Email, SMS, or both types of notifications.

Add or Update Groups

(Available to Engagement and Organization Admins)

With 15Five Integration

If you are accessing the engagement dashboard and syncing data from 15Five, follow these steps:

Add the segments you want to use to your 15Five account and assign employees. They can be added as group types or attributes. Once they are added to 15Five, go to Settings > Bulk Employee Import to sync employees and the groups and attributes into the engagement dashboard.

Without 15Five Integration

If you are accessing the engagement dashboard managing data separate from 15Five, follow these steps:

You can manage the groups that will be used in results by going to Settings > Group Management. There are two types of groups that are available for engagement results - custom and system.

Manage Custom Groups

You can add new group types (like department, location, etc.) to be used in assessment results from the Custom tab in Group Management. To add a group type, click the Add New button. Once a group type has been added, you can assign employees to groups within that group type through the bulk import or from the employees list. Learn more about managing custom groups.

Manage System Groups

System groups are created from data you provide. An employee's hire date can be used to create tenure or hire cohort groups. An employee's birthdate can be used to create generation groups. You can enable or disable system groups for your organization from the System tab in Group Management. Tenure and Hire Cohort groups can be configured based on the hire dates of your employees. Learn more about managing system groups.

Update the participant list

(Available to Engagement Admin and Organization Admins)

With 15Five Integration

If you are accessing the engagement dashboard and syncing data from 15Five, follow these steps:

Add the employees you want to participate in the assessment to your 15Five account. Once they are added to 15Five, go to Settings > Bulk Employee Import to sync employees and the groups and attributes into the engagement dashboard.

Without the 15Five Integration

Now that the assessment is scheduled, review the employee data that will be included in the participant list. At the top of the assessment scheduling page, you can see the current count of employees that will be included in the assessment. To update the employee list, click on the Manage Employees button or go to Settings > Employees.

You can make one-off changes to employees and the groups they are included in from the Employees section. If you have a lot of changes to make, you can import a spreadsheet to make bulk changes. Learn more about managing employee data here.

Review organization and assessment settings

(Available to Engagement Admin and Organization Admins)

The Assessment Settings allow you to control the display name, organization notifications, and survey terminology for the engagement assessment. To review or update these settings, go to Settings > Assessment Settings.

  • Display Name - The display name is the way the organization name will display to employees in the engagement assessment. If there is an abbreviation or name that is more familiar to employees, that name can be used. If the display name is not set, we will use the account name (shown at the top of the Assessment Settings screen).

  • Cycle Duration - The cycle duration determines how often an engagement assessment will be auto scheduled for your organization. You can choose to run an engagement assessment every 90, 120, 180, or 365 days. Update this setting before your current engagement assessment closes so it can be applied to the next engagement assessment that is auto scheduled.

  • Default Message Type - The default message type is what we will use to set the notification type for any new assessments that are added to the Journey timeline. You can select to send assessment messages to employees via Email, SMS, or both. You can also change this setting for an individual assessment by editing that assessment from the timeline.

  • Organization Notifications - Once the assessment has closed, we send notification emails to the account owner and organization admins. We are also able to send these to users with the Leader role in the system. For the Leader role, we send the results ready email one week after the assessment ends so the account owner and organization admins have time to review results. If you would like users with the Leader role to receive this email one week after the assessment end date, make sure this setting is set to Yes. If you prefer them to not receive a notification, this setting can be set to No.

  • Survey Terminology - We allow substitutions for specific words in the engagement assessment. This allows these words to be updated to reflect the term that is most familiar to employees and reflects your organization. You can review the words that are available for substitution, select a substitution, and see which statements in the assessment will be updated.

Industry Benchmark

Additionally, you can select an Industry to benchmark your Engagement Score against. To select an Industry Benchmark, go to Settings > Organization Details and select your preferred industry from the dropdown.

Confirm your participant list and launch date

(Available to Engagement Admin)

We won't send a scheduled assessment at the start time unless that assessment has been confirmed. Confirming an assessment allows you to review that it will send on the correct date and that the participant list is accurate. Once you have scheduled your assessment, updated the participant list, and reviewed the assessment settings, make sure to click the Confirm Participants button. You can access this by clicking on the Engagement Assessment from the Journey Timeline.

Confirming the assessment means that it has been approved and will send at the scheduled start date and time.

Update your allowlist

Before the assessment sends, make sure to add the email addresses associated with the assessment to your allowlist so the assessment emails can reach employees. Use this guide to make sure everything is set up correctly.

You can check that everything is set up correctly by clicking the View Details button for a scheduled assessment. Scroll to the Assessment Notifications section and click the Send Test Message button. You can select a People Insights user and send a test message to verify that the assessment emails are being received.

Communicate to employees

Before the assessment begins, make sure to announce it to employees. This is an opportunity to explain what to expect, why the organization is doing it, and to encourage them to participate. When the assessment is announced ahead of time, we see much higher participation rates. To help you plan your communications, we have email and poster templates that you can use.

Monitor response rate

(Available to Engagement Admin and Organization Admins)

Once the assessment starts, you can check the live response rate. To view the response rate, go to Settings > Structure. You can see the response rate for the entire organization and monitor the response rate for groups.

Keep employee data updated

(Available to Engagement Admin and Organization Admins)

As the assessment runs, you can add, remove, or update employees so the participant list is accurate and current. Learn more about updating employee data during the assessment.

Check the bounce report

(Available to Engagement Admin and Organization Admins)

Once your assessment reminders have been sent, you can go to the assessment page from the Engagement Journey to check for any bounces. Go to the Assessment Notifications section on the page. If there are errors to review, you notice a red warning icon.

Expand the card and click the Download Errors button to download a report of what emails or phone numbers had issues.

Update Assessment Schedule

(Available to Engagement Admin)

While the assessment is open, you can update the date and time for any future reminders, add reminders, remove reminders, or adjust the end date for the assessment. To make updates to the assessment schedule, click View Details for the assessment from the Engagement Journey.

Go to the Assessment Schedule section and click to expand. You can make changes to any reminders that have not been sent by clicking into the field for that reminder.

To add or remove reminders, click the buttons below the Final Reminder.

Schedule your Results Briefings

(Available to Engagement Admin)

While your assessment is open, you can begin to schedule your Results Briefings with your Executive Advisor. The briefings that are available to your organization are listed within the Engagement Cycle on the Journey Timeline.

Go to the Cycle that contains your current Engagement Assessment. Click the Schedule button for the Briefing events in that cycle. This will allow you to select a time to meet with your consultant. To allow your consultant time to analyze the assessment results, select a date that is at least three days past the end of your assessment. Learn more about scheduling briefings here.

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