Latest Company News & Articles from Protostar

Employee Survey

How Often Should you Run an Employee Engagement Survey?

One of the most common questions organisations ask is how often they should survey their employees. Run surveys too infrequently and opportunities to improve engagement may be missed. Run them too often and employees can begin to feel overwhelmed, leading to lower participation and survey fatigue. Finding the right balance is about giving organisations enough information to make informed decisions while allowing time for meaningful action between surveys.

30 June - 3 Minute Read

360 Feedback

Who Should Provide Feedback in a 360 Degree Review?

Choosing the right people to provide feedback is one of the most important decisions in any 360-degree feedback process. While organisations often focus on the questionnaire itself, the quality of the feedback depends just as much on who is invited to complete it. The aim of 360-degree feedback is to build a balanced picture of how someone is experienced by the people they work with most closely. That means including a range of perspectives rather than relying on a single manager's opinion or the views of one particular group.

30 June - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

Should Managers See Employee Survey Comments?

Open comments are often one of the most valuable parts of an employee survey. They provide context behind the scores, highlight issues employees may not raise elsewhere, and often reveal patterns that numerical data alone cannot explain. At the same time, organisations frequently worry about how to handle comments. Should managers see employee comments directly? Will employees still speak honestly if they think their wording could identify them? How do you balance transparency with confidentiality? These questions matter because the way comments are managed can significantly affect both the quality of feedback and the level of trust employees place in the survey process.

13 May - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

Employee Survey Platform vs Outsourced Survey

Organisations planning an employee survey often face an early decision: should they use a survey platform internally, or work with an external provider such as Protostar to manage the process? Both approaches can work well in the right context. The important question is usually not which option is “better” in general, but which is more likely to produce meaningful participation, trustworthy feedback, and useful action within your organisation. This distinction matters because employee surveys are rarely just about collecting data. They are also about trust, communication, leadership credibility, and what happens after the results are shared.

12 May - 3 Minute Read

360 Feedback

Why 360-degree feedback often goes wrong in organisations

360-degree feedback is widely used to support leadership development. In principle, it offers a more rounded view of how individuals are experienced by others, beyond a single line manager perspective. However, if not rolled out effectively, organisations can be disappointed with the results. Feedback can feel vague, overly positive, or difficult to act on. In some cases, it can even create defensiveness or reduce trust. These issues are rarely caused by the idea of 360-degree feedback itself. More often, they come from how the process is positioned, designed, and supported.

15 April - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

What are the biggest mistakes organisations make with employee surveys?

Employee surveys are widely used but often don't achieve much beyond raising expectations that the survey will lead to improvement.  In most cases, the issue isn’t the idea of surveying employees. It’s how the process is designed and handled.

14 April - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

When Should You Use Focus Groups After an Employee Survey?

Even when employee survey respondents are given many opportunities to add free-text comments, their responses often raise important follow-up questions: why do employees feel the way they do, and what suggestions do they have for improvement? This is where focus groups can play a valuable role. Used thoughtfully, they help organisations explore the context behind survey findings and develop a clearer understanding of what employees are experiencing. Ideally, they are done immediately after the survey and before the analysis report is compiled, so that the focus groups inform the report.

27 March - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

What Response Rate Is Good for an Employee Survey?

One of the most common questions organisations ask before launching an employee survey is: What response rate is good enough? It is a sensible question, but it does not have a single universal answer. A response rate matters because it affects how confident you can be that the results genuinely reflect employee views, rather than just the views of a limited group who chose to respond. In practice, the right answer depends on what level of reporting you want to rely on. A response rate that is strong enough for organisation-wide reporting may not be strong enough for meaningful analysis at the department or team level.

26 March - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

What Should You Do After an Employee Engagement Survey?

Running an employee engagement survey is often a significant piece of work for an organisation. But the real value of the process begins after the results are received. Employees notice very quickly whether their feedback leads to meaningful discussion and action. If survey results disappear into a report that few people see, confidence in future surveys can quickly decline. The most effective organisations treat the survey as the start of a listening and improvement process, rather than the end of a measurement exercise.

20 March - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

What Is the Difference Between Coaching and Mentoring?

Organisations often use both coaching and mentoring to support leadership development. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they serve different purposes and work in different ways. Understanding the distinction can help organisations decide which approach will be most useful for a particular leader or situation.

16 March - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

Should Employee Surveys Be Anonymous?

In practice, anonymity is an essential part of creating a survey process that employees trust. Without that confidence, the feedback organisations receive is often cautious, incomplete, or overly positive. Response rates typically plummet if there is even a hint that anonymity is not guaranteed. This is one of the main advantages of using an employee survey provider like Protostar.

12 March - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

What Is An Employee Listening Programme And How Do They Work?

Many organisations collect feedback from employees at some point — often through an engagement survey or focus groups. But increasingly, leaders are asking a broader question: how do we systematically listen to employees and understand what they are experiencing at work? This is where the idea of an employee listening programme comes in. Rather than relying on a single survey or occasional conversations, it creates a structured approach to hearing employee perspectives and using that insight to guide decisions.

12 March - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

How Can We Develop Our Partners’ Leadership Skills in an LLP?

LLPs develop partners’ leadership skills most effectively through structured behavioural feedback using a 360 tool, and facilitated reflection along with coaching — rather than relying on informal conversations or financial performance reviews alone.

25 February - 3 Minute Read

Employee Survey

What Makes Employee Engagement Surveys Worth the Investment?

An engagement survey becomes worth the investment when it leads to better decisions, stronger leadership focus, and visible organisational improvement — not simply when it produces data.

25 February - 3 Minute Read

Opinion

What Are the Benefits of 360-Degree Feedback?

360-degree feedback is widely used because it gives a more complete view of someone’s impact at work than a traditional top-down appraisal. Instead of relying on one manager’s opinion, it gathers structured feedback from multiple perspectives, typically the individual, their manager, peers and direct reports.

29 January - 3 Minute Read