Reassure people it's confidential
The single biggest driver of honest participation is trust. Workers answer candidly when they believe their responses can't be traced back to them.
Lead your communications with the confidentiality promise: individual answers are never shown to managers, and group results only appear once at least five people have responded.
Explain why you're running the survey and what will happen with the results; people participate when they believe it leads to action.
Point to Anonymous and identified responses if your workers want the detail.
Time it well
Avoid peak-crunch periods, major holidays, and the day before a long weekend.
Send early in the working week and earlier in the day, when people are more likely to act on it.
Give a clear, reasonable window: long enough to catch part-timers and people on leave, short enough to keep momentum.
Communicate before, during, and after
Before: have a leader announce the survey and endorse it. A message from someone senior signals it matters.
During: the invitation email carries each person's unique link; make sure your comms tell people to look out for it.
After: close the loop. Share what you heard and what you'll change. This builds trust for the next survey.
Send reminders
ReFresh has no scheduled or automated reminders, so a reminder is a manual re-send.
Track participation on the survey dashboard (Completed / In Progress / Not Started) and follow up with the groups lagging behind.
Re-send from the survey's Send Survey dialog: choose Not Yet Sent to reach anyone who hasn't been emailed yet, or All Recipients to nudge everyone again.
Frame reminders around impact ("we're nearly there, your voice completes the picture"), not pressure.
Reach the right people cleanly
Add whole groups rather than hand-picked individuals, so your recipient list mirrors your org structure and results break down correctly by team and location. See Distributing a survey.
Make sure each group you want to report on has at least five recipients. Very small teams may never clear the floor on their own; plan to report them within a larger parent group.
Keep your people data current (via HRIS sync or CSV import) so invitations reach the right addresses.
The virtuous cycle: Response rates climb over time when people see that surveys lead to real change. Treat your first survey as the start of a habit: run it, act visibly on the findings, and tell people what you did. The follow-through is what earns you a higher response rate next time.