From questionnaire to improvement plan: this is how the employee survey works

How satisfied are your employees? How much workload do they experience and do they feel part of a healthy school culture? An employee survey gives schools insight into this. Anne Besuijen, project leader at DUO-Onderwijs, explains how such a survey works.

Schools can choose from several survey variants. “The basic questionnaires are comprehensive and cover all major themes, such as workload, undesirable behaviour, personal development, cooperation and communication,” Anne explains. “We have been doing this survey for years and know well what is going on in schools and which themes are important.”

Increasingly, schools want to go deeper into specific topics. For this, additional modules are available or own questions can be added. “For example, a school that has just merged wants to know how staff experience that,” says Anne. “Or a school wants to know what the effect of coaching leadership is. We help think about how to ask those themes in the survey and help formulate new questions correctly.”

To prepare for the survey, schools receive a kick-off pack containing all the necessary documents: formats for internal communication and an animation video explaining the survey. “Sometimes we also arrange an internal kick-off,” Anne explains, “for all staff or school directors of a foundation.”

DUO-Onderwijs sends the questionnaires directly to employees. This requires some personal data, such as name, e-mail address, age and years of service. “This is always done through an AVG-proof processing agreement,” Anne stresses. “We handle data very carefully and are ISO-certified.” DUO-Onderwijs has developed its own customer portal for this purpose, where schools can find all relevant data and submit their data securely.

The survey will run for about three weeks. Employees who have not yet responded will automatically receive a reminder. The school can track the response via the online customer portal. “We keep in touch to estimate how high the response rate will be,” says Anne. “Afterwards, we prepare the reports, usually within two to three weeks.”

The reports show at a glance where employees are satisfied and where there are areas for improvement. “We offer an online dashboard in which the school itself can work with the results. This allows a school to do its own analysis and, for example, download results in Excel and graphs.” The researchers work with fixed standards for satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Anne explains: “Because teachers in primary education often rate more positively, the standard there is slightly higher. We also compare the results with a national benchmark. That provides a lot of information: last period, 35,000 employees participated,” Anne explains.

Anne believes it is important that the results do not disappear into the closet. “Schools can opt for a follow-up discussion in which we explain how the figures can be interpreted and what possible follow-up steps can be taken.” Some schools ask DUO-Onderwijs for a presentation for staff, while others opt for a practical approach. “For example, we give workshops in which we determine together what the school can do to improve and what role employees have in this. This way, the research leads to concrete actions.”

Schools can then work on the areas for improvement. “After about two years, a new survey often follows,” Anne concludes. “We then compare the results with the previous time and look together at the effect of the measures taken. In this way, the employee survey becomes part of a continuous improvement cycle.”