Using the Staff Survey

Our Staff Survey is designed to be used anonymously to ensure staff feel able to respond honestly, giving you a realistic picture of your staff's wellbeing. This feedback can inform you of your staff's strengths and challenges, to consider interventions that would be most beneficial in your school at this time for optimum staff wellbeing. Do communicate this with staff to maximise genuine engagement.

Tips for carrying out the survey

We recommend following these five tips to get the most informative information for your school:

• When to carry out survey Your survey results may vary according to the time of the year. For example, you may choose to survey during exam season, when stress levels may be high. Asking staff to complete a survey in the summer will allow them to reflect on the successes and challenges while allowing for scope for meaningful change for the next academic year.
• Comparing your results Comparing your results with other results can provide context for the responses from your staff team. The established questionnaires used in Section 1 mean that these results can be compared with other studies and research. If you know other schools or colleges who are using this survey, you could share your results and work together to identify strengths and challenges.
• Sharing survey results Sharing survey results can be a useful starting point for discussions and action planning. Sharing and discussing findings openly with staff and providing a safe space for reflection can encourage staff contributions in both exploring issues and identifying solutions.
• Embedding your findings Once you’ve shared results you may wish to think how to embed the findings in your planning process. For example, you could dedicate a half-term meeting cycle to the findings and include mental health and wellbeing as a standing item at meetings or use CPD sessions for deeper discussions. Action that you identify from the survey can also be embedded in your planning cycle and your Education Improvement Plan.
• Repeating the survey Repeating the survey on a regular basis can help schools and colleges to see change. By comparing the results at different time points, schools and colleges can monitor whether actions are having the intended impact. You may also be able to spot emerging issues.

Privacy and data protection 

The staff in your school will be asked to volunteer to take part in this programme. It is up to each individual staff member to decide if they would like to participate.  

If the staff member decides to take part, the staff member will be asked a number of survey questions. The survey explores professional confidence and ability to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of staff at your school.  

All data in the survey are stored in secure systems that are only accessible to authorised members of the project team.  

The survey will not ask for your staff members’ name, date of birth or contact information. To help us analyse the data, the staff members will be asked to optionally provide their place of work, broad role with the school, gender, ethnicity and age group.  

All data used for the final report will be completely anonymised and staff members will not be identified in any publications.  

We will look after the data for a period of ten years after the project ends, after which it will be securely deleted/destroyed.  

Participants have certain rights under data protection legislation in relation to the personal information that we would hold about them. These rights are set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  

About the Staff Survey

About the Staff Report