How to Collect Employee Testimonials

Employee testimonials can be an important part of showcasing your company culture and recruiting new talent. However, gathering employee testimonials can be difficult. Your employees are busy and might not know what to say. Let’s take a look at a few strategies to collect employee testimonials.

What Makes a Great Employee Testimonial

Collecting a large number of employee testimonials is important, but the quality of your testimonials is also important. Which brings up an interesting question; what makes a great employee testimonial?

To identify the elements of a great employee testimonial, it’s important to first identify what you need your testimonials to do. Your employee testimonials might accomplish several different things, including the following:

Show company culture and values: Your employees are in a unique position to showcase your company culture and values. By showing what your employees care about, and how this impacts their job, you can also show the priorities of your company, and how you operate.
Recruit talent: Prospective employees can get the best idea of how your company works and what they can expect by hearing from current employees.
Showcase your process: Your employees can also show how your company works, including how much technology you use, how closely you work with customers, and much more. This can be valuable to fellow employees, prospective employees, and customers alike.
Troubleshooting: Sometimes, employee testimonials are purely internal. You might use employee testimonials to assess a process, uncover inefficiencies, or make improvements. However, this process must be done with care.

These are just a few examples of the impacts of employee testimonials. There are many other reasons you might collect testimonials. Now that we have a few reasons to collect testimonials, let’s take a look at what makes a great employee testimonial.

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Elements of Great Employee Testimonials

What makes a great employee testimonial? To some extent, as previously mentioned, this depends on what you are using your employee testimonials for. However, there are a few things that great employee testimonials do have in common. Let’s take a look.

Details: Great employee testimonials will show viewers inside knowledge and details about your business. Targeted questions that allow employees to provide details about their job and role will help create a great testimonial.
Honesty: Honesty is key to any good testimonial, and this is also true for employee testimonials. Emphasize to your employees that their honesty is important, and you’re looking for real accounts of their work, priorities, and how they feel.
Earnestness: The most impactful testimonials display emotion and earnestness, which helps the audience connect with the person providing the testimonial. If your testimonial is too rehearsed, it may seem disingenuous, so it’s all right for your employees to laugh, stumble, or take their time answering.

How to Collect Employee Testimonials

To collect employee testimonials, it’s helpful to have a plan. Let’s walk through an effective strategy to gather employee testimonials, as well as some tips to help.

Consider Your Goals

The first step to collect employee testimonials is to consider your goals. What type of information are you looking for, and why? Where will you be showing your testimonials? Who are you trying to reach? How many testimonials would you like to obtain? Who would like to speak to? Answers to each of these questions will help you refine your process.

Select Your Questions

With the answers to the previous questions in mind, consider what questions you’d like to ask your employees. Let’s consider a few options that can help guide your question selection.

Introduction: A few easy introductory questions will help set the stage for your interview. This will also help the testimonial viewers better understand who the employee is and what they do. Consider questions like how long the employee has worked at the business, or what their position is.
Day-in-the-life: To better understand what the employee does, consider questions that would provide more information about their day-to-day tasks. You might ask about their normal routine, how they spend most of their time, who they work closest with, or what equipment or technology they use most often.
Dig Deeper: After the employee has answered a few questions about themselves and their regular routine, consider asking a few deeper questions that might reveal more information about them and the company. This might include questions like, how the employee’s values align with the company’s, what their most impactful project or task is, or how they think the company prioritizes inclusivity or work-life-balance.
Finish up: To finish the testimonial, it’s helpful to ask a lighter question that’s likely to illicit a positive response. You might ask a question like, what would you say to others who are considering working here? Or, what their favorite part of their job is.

Arrange Your Platform

To make your testimonial collection easy and simple, it’s helpful to have a streamlined system. Your employees, or whomever is conducting the interviews, should be able to record and submit the testimonials without downloading extra software or taking extra steps.

Collecting testimonials on your website or on a separate page for your employees can make the process easy and efficient. For this, you’ll need just a few elements on the page, including the following:

Submission form: You’ll need a way for employees to submit their testimonials using an embedded form. This form should allow your employee to submit their video using only their smartphone or other device.
Prompts: Prompts or questions can give your employees some guidance as to what information you’re looking for, or how long their testimonial should be. You might send questions separately to your employees, or provide them on the page itself.
Release form: Your release form should tell your employees how you will use their testimonial, where it will be shown, and ask for their permission to do so.

Talk to Your Employees

To collect testimonials from your employees, you’ll need their enthusiastic participation. Make sure that your employees are aware of your effort to gather testimonials, and why you are looking for them. Give your employees plenty of notice. Since your employees will need to take time and energy away from their regular duties to make a testimonial, it’s also helpful to provide your employees some incentive, such as an afternoon off, a cash prize, a gift card, or something similar.

It’s also helpful to give your employees advance notice of the questions you plan to ask, and when and how you’d like to conduct these interviews. Alternatively, you could allow your employees to submit testimonials at the time and place that is most comfortable and convenient for them. If you use this method, the testimonials might not be as high-quality, but you are likely to receive more testimonials.

With the right strategy in place beforehand, you can collect high-quality testimonials from employees to help with your recruitment efforts, company culture spotlights, and more. Outline your plan, write your questions, set up your collection method, inform your employees, and get started!