Our staff survey allows us to hear from staff about what matters to them. It’s important for us to know how you feel about working at Sussex so that together we can understand what we might need to do differently in future.
About the staff survey
We ran two staff pulse surveys in 2022, on 25 April - 13 May and 3 - 21 October. You can view the results and ongoing action plans for the University and our Schools and Divisions.
The results of our surveys help leaders and managers to understand what matters most to you. By asking you to share your views in a confidential online survey, we can hear from a significant number of people and understand more about your experience of working at Sussex and what you think we could be doing differently or better.
Data from staff surveys are also vital to our equalities work, as they allow us to evidence the targets we propose in our equalities action plans and demonstrate improvement.
Note: We are currently reviewing the overall approach for the staff survey, and there will be opportunities to share your thoughts on how it could be improved. The date and arrangements for the next survey will be confirmed once the review is concluded.
How we share the results
- The results are shared with the University Leadership Team (ULT)
- Survey data is available to trained dashboard users in each School and Division
- University-level results are shared with all staff, and Heads of School and Divisional Directors share their local results with teams for discussion and local action planning. Local teams are also asked to suggest institutional level priorities
- Ongoing University-level, Professional Service divisional and School action plans are updated and shared with all staff
View latest survey results
What is a pulse survey and why use it?
A pulse survey is a shorter, more frequent survey. By doing two pulse surveys a year we can hear the views of staff more regularly, build up a picture of your views on working here and respond to emerging issues.
What difference will my views make?
A strong response rate means we can be confident that we are hearing a meaningful representation of views. Everyone’s views matter, including yours.
Are responses managed in confidence?
Yes. We have completed a data protection check on the process and on our survey provider, People Insight, to ensure that your data is held and managed in line with legislation.
We know that a lot of work has taken place to explore results from the previous survey in more detail. We also understand that some concern has been expressed about confidentiality of responses and/or any comments made. This appears to have led to some respondents not completing the demographic data.
Our staff survey operates on what is termed the ‘rule of 10’ meaning no departmental results for groups of fewer than 10 people are released. In order to ensure that no assumptions can be made about individual responses, results for any department or work-group of fewer than people are ‘rolled up’ and included in a higher level grouping.
We ask for demographic data at the end of the survey not to identify participants but so that we can identify any patterns that may need addressing. Without that data, we may understand that there is dissatisfaction, but be unclear as to what we can do or how to explore further.
Read more about what happens to your response data when you complete the staff survey.
About the survey results
Your Head of School and Divisional Director will see the results for your area and will share these with you.
We will also publish a University-wide summary of results.
Each School and Division updates their ongoing action plan to take forward any themes that emerge from their pulse survey. We also publish an updated UEG action plan. Changes and trends in staff survey results are monitored regularly by the People, Culture, and Inclusion Committee, the University’s Executive Group (UEG), Strategic Performance and Resources Committee and Council.
Past surveys
We have made progress on the majority of our targets since the 2018 long staff survey. See the 2018 staff survey results.
See the results of all surveys below. You’ll need to log in with your normal staff sign-in credentials to see these pages:
- 2022 staff survey results
- 2021 staff survey results
- 2018 staff survey results
- 2016 staff survey results
- 2015 interim staff survey results
- 2014 staff survey results.
Feedback
If you wish to offer feedback to our communications team on the staff survey, you can email internalcomms@sussex.ac.uk.