Understand employee needs with this staff wellbeing survey

Creating a healthy and happy workforce starts by addressing your team’s needs. And what better way to achieve this than a staff wellbeing survey?

The first step to creating a culture where employees feel valued is to truly understand what your people need and expect. This is best characterised by conscious leadership and demonstrates a sense of compassion, empathy and care as a manager.

Because that’s all people really want from an employer; one that listens and actively supports them. It’s through initiatives like a staff wellbeing questionnaire that leadership teams can truly understand people. Anything less is arguably a waste of time.

Before you download our staff wellbeing survey, let’s get a better understanding of what it entails and what you can expect. For more content on creating healthier, happier teams, don’t forget to check out our blog!

What is a staff wellbeing survey?

A staff wellbeing survey is a questionnaire carried out by an employer to get a better understanding of wellbeing in the workplace, this includes the following:

Applied to a work environment, these wellbeing questionnaires may focus on areas like anxiety, employee burnout, bullying and more. And although uncomfortable, these conversations will lead to happier employees.

Following on from the staff wellbeing survey, the responses provide leaders with the insight necessary to make changes within the company. This may be new ways of working, new approaches to management and leadership or new incentives.

But a staff wellbeing survey is only half the battle. Without action, it’s nothing but data, and so businesses should always look to utilise their findings. Some companies conduct all the right meetings and surveys, but never make the most of this information.

Why is a staff wellbeing survey so important?

So, now we understand what a staff wellbeing survey is, why should you care? Below, we’ve explored just some of the benefits to think about.

Genuine and honest feedback

Whilst it’s important to encourage a culture of openness and honesty, some employees don’t feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings about the workplace. This isn’t something to be frowned upon and instead encouraged via a staff wellbeing survey.

By utilising an anonymous staff wellbeing survey, you can really get to the heart of the matters within your business. In fact, even with a culture of openness, it’s still likely you won’t receive excellent feedback without anonymity.

If you want candid truth from your workforce, quiz them on matters such as company values, current benefits packages, management effectiveness and more.

Pro tip: Read our guide to why your current feedback approach may be harming employee wellbeing.

Your results support the wider wellbeing strategy

Next up, the responses you receive in your staff wellbeing questionnaire help inform better decision making in the wider wellbeing strategy.

This could be the difference between investing in yet more underutilised benefits or providing exactly what your employees need. But it’s not just your incentives that receive the attention they need.

Through your staff wellbeing survey, you might discover there is a huge demand for flexible working opportunities like remote work. Having knowledge of this interest means you can begin to implement and trial different ways of working that your team want.

If you already conduct wellbeing meetings or have a hefty staff wellbeing strategy in place, it’s questionnaires and surveys that can help you revamp your approach and do away with any flaws or mistakes.

Identify immediate causes for concern

A staff wellbeing questionnaire identifies areas that require immediate attention. For instance, if your management style is driving away top talent and increasing labour turnover, your business is likely taking a huge financial hit.

Dealing with project handovers, recruiting, job advertising, interviewing, hiring and training doesn’t come without costs. It’s a lengthy process and it’s one reason to always strive for excellent employee retention.

By listening to the concerns your team has about management effectiveness, you can address issues like micromanagement and toxicity with other leaders in your company. This can then be resolved which will likely encourage employees to stick around.

When should I carry out a staff wellbeing survey?

We recommend carrying out a staff wellbeing survey every three to six months. An employee wellbeing strategy doesn’t have an end goal. It’s an ongoing process that requires constant revision. As employee needs change, so should your plans.

By pivoting in a new direction with your employee wellbeing strategy, drafting up a new staff wellbeing questionnaire with different questions and regularly collecting feedback, you’re destined to increase the health and happiness of your team.

Don’t become that business that conducts one staff wellbeing survey, just to abandon all suggestions ideas and opinions in three months' time. After all, how can you be sure your last staff wellbeing questionnaire worked without hearing from your team again?

To ensure your staff wellbeing survey is executed regularly, hand over the responsibility to someone in your HR department. You can then check in with this individual to find out three things:

  1. When the last staff wellbeing survey was completed
  2. The results from your last staff wellbeing questionnaire
  3. The expected date for the next survey

It’s all about streamlining your staff wellbeing questionnaire. If it creates too much hassle, it’s likely to be forgotten about. This brings us to our next point for creating a staff wellbeing survey… come up with a solid strategy.

How to plan your staff wellbeing questionnaire

Planning your staff wellbeing questionnaire needn’t be a difficult task. Like anything, planning and strategising are key to producing the best results. Before any meetings are held, questions are asked or responses are analysed some work is needed.

Firstly, start by sitting down with all other senior team members to discuss these three things for your staff wellbeing survey:

  1. Who is responsible for the strategy?
  2. What are our intended outcomes?
  3. How does our current wellbeing strategy look?

By recognising current efforts, assigning responsibilities and goal-setting, you’re well on your way to conducting your first staff wellbeing survey. It’s important these conversations are held to hear the ideas and opinions of other senior staff.

Next, you should decide on the various channels of communication that will be used for your staff wellbeing questionnaire. You might have an in-office notice board where printed surveys can be added. It’s about ensuring employees are in the loop.

By acting efficiently and planning your staff wellbeing questionnaire means you can save time and resources gathering the more accurate results. Each employee wellbeing survey must fit the needs and interests of your organisation.

That’s why, although we’ve put together a survey for you to download, we strongly recommend tweaking the questionnaire to fit your workforce.

With these considerations in mind, you’re well on your way to listening to your team more effectively and supporting workplace wellbeing.

Other types of staff surveys

HR departments are responsible for a lot of different things when it comes to people management. That means they are also conducting surveys, questionnaires and other research into their workforce.

In addition to a staff wellbeing questionnaire, many organisations carry out conversations and surveys:

  • Employee engagement surveys
  • Annual performance reviews
  • Job satisfaction questionnaires
  • Stay and exit interviews
  • Training and development analysis
  • Work-life balance questionnaires
  • Employee commuting surveys
  • Management effectiveness meetings

As you can see, the list goes on. Everything from how employees reach the workplace to the effectiveness of their manager. These are all conversations, surveys and questionnaires that invite new thoughts and opinions for businesses to think about.

Of course, we’re focusing on a staff wellbeing survey and the benefits it offers to your business — although, that’s not to say we won’t create resources for some of the above in the near future.

Further on in this introduction to our staff wellbeing questionnaire, we’ll look at some of the prompts and ideas as part of your survey. For now, it’s all about grasping what makes a staff wellbeing survey so pivotal in today’s workplace.

Staff wellbeing Questionnaire ideas

Finally, let’s talk about staff wellbeing questionnaire ideas. This is the last section of this introduction to our resource on the right-hand side of this page. Here, we want to give you as much wisdom into crafting questions as possible.

Before you go any further, we strongly recommend reading through our guide to wellbeing meetings. Within this page, we list dozens of question ideas for hosting conversations on wellbeing topics.

Wellbeing meetings are just as important as any staff wellbeing questionnaire, so be sure to find out how to optimise those conversations.

Below, we’ve listed just some of the best additions for your staff wellbeing questionnaire — take from them what you need!

  1. Are your personal wellbeing needs met in the workplace?
  2. Do you think our wellbeing support your needs outside of work?
  3. Does our health and wellbeing focus exceed that of your previous employer?
  4. How would rate our health and wellbeing efforts on a scale of one to ten?
  5. Do you feel as though your line manager listens and acts on your needs?
  6. Are you comfortable discussing health and wellbeing at work?
  7. Do you feel positively about the workplace culture we have built?
  8. Are our employee benefits meaningful and useful to you?
  9. Do the majority of them support your health, wellbeing and happiness?
  10. What wellbeing perks can we introduce to support you better?
  11. How would you describe work life balance as an employee here?
  12. Do you have any existing concerns and how have they been addressed?
  13. Do your feel like your colleagues are supportive?
  14. What’s one thing you would change about our approach to wellbeing?
  15. Does a staff wellbeing questionnaire help you express your thoughts?

Of course, this list is by no means exhaustive, and you should combine this with the prompts found within in our staff wellbeing survey. However, it should get you thinking about the type of questions to ask your team.

What will I learn in this guide to creating a staff wellbeing survey

This brings us to our final point! What will you learn specifically in this guide to creating a staff wellbeing survey? Well, we’re glad you asked.

Once you’ve hit the download question, you’ll receive access to an employee wellbeing template. This gives you the chance to collect honest feedback on the current state of your company’s wellbeing approach.

It also allows your team to open up and express how they’d like to be supported by you, as a leader. This staff wellbeing survey definitely requires an openness and the ability to accept critical feedback.

In the first couple of pages, you’ll discover just how important it is to ensure your team feel valued in the workplace. We then explore the need for variety and diverse wellbeing support, before jumping into the staff wellbeing questionnaire.

These tried and tested questions should be presented to your team by printing the PDF. Once you’ve done that, the rules are simple: ask your employees to give each statement a rating from 1 to 5.

Done this way, you gain a better insight into whether there’s any hesitation or doubt to choose a higher or lower rating — we think it’s the optimum way to conduct this staff wellbeing survey.

After this, there are a number of ’Yes and No’ questions for employees to take before they are prompted with different physical activities and lifestyle choices that they enjoy.

So, what are you waiting for? Download our free staff wellbeing survey now and start creating healthier, happier teams!

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