Broadcast: News items

Today (21 April), Siobhan O'Reilly, Director of HR, wrote to all staff. You can read the message in full below.

Introduction from Siobhan O'Reilly, Director of HR

Dear colleague,

The first of our 2022 staff pulse surveys will open on Monday, 25 April and run until Friday 13 May.

We are holding two shorter surveys a year so we can understand what it’s like to work at Sussex and be more responsive to emerging issues. Our staff surveys are part of an ongoing listening strategy, and they allow us to ‘take the pulse’ of how people feel about working here more regularly.

The two surveys will be differently themed. The focus of the spring survey will be belonging, wellbeing and EDI and in the autumn term we’ll focus on staff development and workload management.

We hope this will allow us to build a picture over time about how it feels to work here, and also importantly, whether the changes we make as a result are having the desired impact. You can read an update on what Schools and Divisions are doing in response to the survey results - and the impact these actions are having. You can also find out more about progress on the University Executive Group (UEG) actions. Some actions take longer to implement but by holding more regular surveys we can keep the conversations going and listen to what matters most to you.

This latest online survey, delivered again by our partner organisation People Insight, is confidential and no answers or comments will be attributable to any individual. We hope this will encourage you to share your views about your experience of working here.

You can take part by clicking on the link in the email which will come from People Insight, which is unique to you so please do not pass this on to colleagues. The survey will take you around 10 minutes to complete.

Please do make sure your voice is heard, so that together we can change things for the better here at Sussex.

Best wishes

Siobhan O'Reilly
Director of Human Resources

Survey confidentiality

All survey responses are managed in confidence. 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 ten’ meaning no departmental results for groups of less than ten people are released. In order to ensure that no assumptions can be made about individual responses, results for any department or work-group of less than ten 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.