Technical errors discovered with this year’s Staff Survey

25 May 2022

Decision taken to re-run Staff Survey in the Autumn

We have discovered a technical set-up error by our survey provider in relation to this year’s Staff Survey.

What issues have been identified?

Simply put, some staff who have already responded to this year’s staff survey were not asked certain questions. This was not evident in our trialling prior to the survey roll-out.

Specifically, this occurred for four of the core questions on leadership, and for some of the follow-up questions in the section for staff who reported they had felt discriminated against in last 12 months. These are clearly very important questions.

Next steps

We have looked at ways to rectify this set-up error. However, after due consideration of the options available to us, and the number of responses that may be affected, we do not believe any of those solutions would provide a sufficiently robust outcome that would stand up to rightful scrutiny.

Feedback from all staff on all of these questions is essential for us to develop our thinking and actions around our leadership, people and organisational development and equality, diversity and inclusion agendas. We cannot compromise on receiving that full feedback.

In order to ensure we have a full, comprehensive and accurate view of all staff responses, we have decided to halt this version of the Staff Survey and re-issue the corrected version in early September.

This timing will avoid the heavy marking period for many academic colleagues and of course the period in July and August when many staff will take a well-earned break.

Of course, we apologise to those of you who have already taken the time to answer the Staff Survey questions.

For all of you who have already responded, our commitment to plant a tree for every completed copy of survey will be absolutely upheld with 6,500 trees so far earmarked.

Once that Autumn Staff Survey is successfully completed, we intend to follow up with a swift release of the results and the development of follow-on action plans and further engagement with you.

Professor Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research

Adèle MacKinlay, Director of People and Organisational Development