Next week, we’re launching the ‘Employee Survey at Bath’, which offers you a real opportunity to drive positive change and improve our employee experience and environment.
One thing I have consistently tried to do since arriving at Bath is develop a proper understanding of the organisation – by talking to people and working around the campus so that people have the opportunity to grab me and let me know…whatever they think I need to know! But we’re a large organisation and I can’t hope to speak to everybody on a regular basis.
That’s why we need a variety of approaches to gathering views from our community – what we’re doing well, what we need to improve, and so on. The new Employee Survey is one of those approaches, and an important one because it’s one of the few that can realistically allow us to hear from everyone (in principle at least).
And there’s the rub – the results of the survey will be most useful the more people that respond. As an occasional epidemiologist (at least in a past life when I was an active researcher!) I know that surveys such as these need to be representative in order to be accurate. In other words, we need everyone (or as close as possible) to complete the survey.
I know that people are busy, but this really does matter – particularly as we develop the next iteration of our institutional strategy. What we learn from the survey will feed directly into this, and help us understand the existing strengths that we can build from, and where we need to invest to ensure we really do have the necessary foundation for the future in place.
Below I’ve explained a bit more about the survey – why we’re running it, who we’re using to run the survey (and why), when it will be running, and so on. In the meantime, if you have any questions please email the Director of Human Resources inbox or Melissa Oram (Project Officer).
Thank you in advance for your time, and if you do see me around campus and want to elaborate on anything the survey doesn’t allow you to convey fully please do say!
Why are we launching a survey?
Since the pandemic, we’ve run an internal staff ‘Work & Wellbeing’ survey three times every academic year, exploring key work and wellbeing topics as well as real-time organisational issues. These surveys have provided valuable insights to inform institutional decisions, provide longitudinal data to track trends, and benchmark ourselves against national standards.
We’re experiencing substantial changes in Higher Education and have a real opportunity to shape Bath as somewhere different that can lead the way during those changes. Having a distinctive and positive employee experience is key to successfully navigating this period – we have a strong sense of community and want to build on that.
That is why we are investing in and launching a new type of survey – we want to hear from you.
Why People Insight?
We’ve commissioned People Insight– an employee engagement specialist – to set up, run and manage our survey. They help universities to listen, respond and understand the employee voice, turning feedback into meaningful action. We’ve asked them to conduct the survey, given their extensive experience in running employee surveys with other organisations across the UK and internationally.
How can I contribute?
We want all staff to feel heard — this survey is your opportunity to share honest feedback and help shape our future direction. The survey is open between Tuesday 4th and Tuesday 25th November and will take approximately 10 minutes to complete.
You will receive an external email from People Insight asking you to click on the link and fill in the survey – the email address is survey-invite@peopleinsight.co.uk. Please take the time to fill it in and encourage your colleagues to do so, too.
You’ll also have the chance to be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 voucher to thank you for taking part.
What will happen next?
Once the survey has closed, People Insight will collect, report, and analyse the data for us. We’ll then share the results with all staff, including where the results place us with respect to national standards. We’ll also produce reports based on the feedback from certain respondent groups, although we’ll only be able to do that for groups where there are 10 or more respondents to protect anonymity.
Respond
