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Survey distribution and response issues

If a survey is not reaching workers, or response rates are unexpectedly low, the cause is usually email delivery, recipient configuration, or the minimum-response anonymity threshold.

Written by Taylor Laing

Quick checks:

  • Workers receive surveys via email; check their spam folder first.

  • Confirm the right recipients are added to the survey.

  • Aggregated group results only display once at least five people in a group have completed the survey (see below).

  • If a worker can't open the link, check whether their email client forwarded or rewrote it.

  • For ongoing low response rates, send an email reminder and ask managers to encourage their teams.

Workers not receiving the survey email

  1. Confirm the worker is on the recipient list; open the survey and check the recipients.

  2. Ask the worker to check their spam or junk folder.

  3. Confirm the worker's email address on file (Settings → Employees, then open the employee).

  4. Ask your IT team to allow-list email from app.refresh.tech.

  5. Resend the invitation from the survey detail page.

Worker clicked the link but cannot start the survey

Survey links are unique and single-use. A few things can trip this up:

  • If the link was opened in another tab and then closed, opening it again may show a "completed" or "in progress" state.

  • Some email clients rewrite links. Ask the worker to copy the full URL into their browser address bar manually.

  • The link may have expired if a survey window (a closing date) is configured. Resend a fresh invitation.

Aggregated results not displaying

ReFresh hides a group's results until at least five people in that group have completed the survey. This is deliberate: aggregated scores for very small groups can effectively reveal individual answers.

To see group-level results, make sure each group you want to report on has at least five recipients, and a high enough response rate, for five of them to complete it.

This five-response floor is the same across all wellbeing analytics in ReFresh, not just surveys.

Low response rate

If your response rate is below expectations:

  • Send a reminder email from the survey detail page.

  • Ask managers to encourage their teams directly.

  • Make sure workers know roughly how long the survey takes; the survey introduction tells them.

  • Check that the survey is still Active (not yet Closed) and that its window hasn't passed.

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