Obtaining a high participation rate

Obtaining a high response rate is helpful in ensuring your results correctly reflect the situation across your school.
 
As a crude rule of thumb, for a staff wellbeing survey, a response rate of over 50% could be considered adequate; over 60% desirable; over 70% good; and more than 80% very good and what you should aim towards.
 
With a response rate of less than 50%, the data should be considered as indicative only and treated with caution.
 
There are several things you can do to encourage a high response rate before you start your survey. Not least is that staff should feel it is important, that their views matter and that they will be acted on. 
 
Scroll down to see an example message you can use and adapt to publicise the survey with staff 
 
  • Publicise the survey within the school; include supportive comments from senior management and staff/union representatives, where appropriate, encouraging people to take part, before it is distributed.
  • Explain to all staff:
    • The purpose of the survey.
    • Why they should take part – what’s in it for them and that they should not rely on others as personal wellbeing is subjective.
    • How and when they will be receiving a link to the survey.
    • How and when they will get feedback on results.
    • How actions will be taken to address the findings.
 
  • Ensure anonymity of responses. This will encourage staff to give frank and honest responses. A formal statement of anonymity at the beginning of the survey (which we include) will help with this. You should also reinforce this in school. It is also why using an external provider helps.
 
  • Give people enough time to complete the survey. It should take no more than 10 minutes for most staff. It can be taken on a smartphone and is automated between questions and intuitive.  Staff who need support or those that tend to think more deeply may take longer and quoting 10 - 15 minutes is advisable.
 
  • Ensure managers understand that the process is important and that they encourage their staff to take time to complete the survey.
 
  • Ideally, allow staff to complete the survey in work time, rather than expecting them to complete it in their own time. We know that this provides much better response rates. We have found that doing this at the start of a meeting, for example, and giving them time to go away and complete and then come back works better than finishing earlier and giving time then (they sometimes do other things instead). During Covid-19 school closures, this was sometimes done by interrupting a Teams, Zoom or google meeting and if you continue to use remote meetings, then this is still a possible method.
 
  • Continue to publicise the survey throughout the process.
 
  • Provide appropriate instructions and a contact for questions or support.
 
An example message you might use and adapt to publicise the survey with staff is included below.
 
Dear [Colleague],
 
[School Name] is committed to protecting the health, safety and welfare of its staff and we acknowledge the importance of wellbeing and tackling the causes of stress in our workplace.
 
We would like your support in undertaking a survey, which is designed to find out how you feel about various aspects of working conditions here. We are asking you and your colleagues to do this to be sure that we are doing all we can to make this a good place to work. The survey is anonymous and the questions asked do not allow for any individual to be identified.
 
We have asked a third party, Welbee (welbee.co.uk) to run the survey for us. 
 
You will receive an invitation from them with a link to allow you to take the survey online, please complete it as soon as you can (or enter details of the survey launch date or a time for them to take it at work) and before (enter date). If you are unable to see the survey invitation then please check your spam/junk folder (delete one as appropriate).
 
When the survey responses have been collated, summary results will be shared with you, and we will reach an agreement on appropriate action.
 
Please take the time to complete the survey. It will provide an indication of how well we are performing and where there may be opportunities for us to improve. Don’t rely on others to raise issues, as wellbeing and stress is subjective and can affect people in different ways.
 
The survey should take 10 minutes to complete. For each question click on the answer that most accurately reflects how you feel. There is also the opportunity for you to share comments about what you think is going well and how we might improve.
 
If you have any questions, please contact [enter contact name/phone number].
 
Thank you for participating.
 
You can copy and paste the above message and amend it as needed. You should also let staff know that you will be able to respond anonymously to comments they make, and you can add this to the above message, although it may be easier to communicate this part verbally.
 
Staff FAQs
You can share the link to the following page with staff or take further information from it. This explains more about how we protect anonymity and other key questions we have heard from staff - the link is  https://welbee.co.uk/staff-questions.

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