Membership Querries via Texting

Click on the Picture to enlarge it.

Tonight I discovered a FREE tool that I think chapters might have some fun with as well as learn a little about their membership without burdening them. It’s called PollEverywhere.com and can be used via website response or texting response. For example, I set up a test question (that of course we definitely want to promote that says “What are you looking forward to at #ILSHRM11?”.

I can send both the text option and the email polling option out to our SHRM members in the state via email, twitter, linked in, facebook, etc. and then wait to see the responses. You can see the picture here shows you the question, the texting, or web submission options. You can also see my test (but sincere) response: “Seeing John Jorgensen”.

So let’s think here a bit on how we might use this as SHRM leaders. One thing that came to my mind immediately was a SHRM Leadership conference a year or two ago whereas leaders in the audience the session facilitators gave us all this little square device. It was a little bigger than a cell phone and we pushed a button for the answer we want to give. Questions were things like: How long have you been in HR?; What size of company do you hail from? What is your biggest HR issue that keeps you up at night, etc.?

Other ideas that I have seen on membership surveys in the past when I was more involved at the chapter level were things like (not worded exactly like this I might add): Do you like this facility? Did you like the speaker? Do you have a suggestion for topics we could cover next year? The thing about this is that the responses can be sent during a meeting (synchronously) or anytime at the convenience of the member (asynchronously). During a meeting you can just pull up the website and watch the responses pop up on the screen. After a meeting you could post the responses in a newsletter or an email as feedback to the participants of the poll.

One thing to note is that everyone who answers will want to see their results. It’s kind of like an employee opinion survey: Don’t ask if you’re not going to do anything with it! My example was open ended but you can have multiple choice as well as other options depending on your needs. Interesting? I thought so.

So let’s really test this. I have asked the question: What are you looking forward to at #ILSHRM11? You can respond via texting (215941; your answer to 37607) or via website (215941 and your message to http://poll4.com). I will post the results in a later blog post so you can see the responses. I look forward to your comments on how you can use this in your chapter

Build television sms voting polls at Poll Everywhere

-Donna Rogers ISC SHRM State Council Chair