Tool: StressMeter™ - Employee Wellbeing Survey

Business type: NHS Hospitals Trust

Location: North West

Budget: "The survey was completed within our budget of £5,000."

Timescales: "From Trust approval it took us 3 weeks to finalise our additional questions and issue our welcome letters. Data was collected within one month and the reports were presented 7 days later." 

Background: "Following an HSE inspection, our organisation had already developed a policy for workplace stress and established a working party co-ordinated by our Occupational Health and Health and Safety teams. To complement the information we already had from sickness and absence records, a survey of employees was required to identify the possible causes of stress and locate any hot spots within the Trust where interventions may be appropriate. 
  
Our survey was presented as an Employee Wellbeing Survey based on the StressMeter™ system and included the standard HSE Stress Indicator Tool. We added extra questions relating to broader issues of employee wellbeing and filter questions to identify the various sites, directorates and job categories within our Trust. 
  
A welcome letter with log-in information was sent out to all employees with their payslip and the majority of respondents then completed the survey on-line. Paper questionnaires were issued on request.  
  
We were provided with regular reports as the data was collected allowing us to give extra encouragement to any underrepresented areas. We were delighted with participation which was four times higher than our last NHS Staff survey and all departments were represented."
  
Outcome:  "The HSE guidelines were met with minimum of cost and our stress risk assessment was carried out without having to divert any of our staff away from their normal responsibilities.

In addition to an extremely useful HSE compliant stress risk assessment for the entire Trust, we also received detailed reports for each of the management standards and individual reports for each location, directorate and department. 
  
A detailed benchmark report allowed us to compare our results with other NHS Trusts and proved to be very useful in understanding and interpreting our results.  
  
Each Directorate and Department Head received their own reports which were then used to identify any stress hot spots within their area. This proved very useful in encouraging enthusiastic participation in the interventions that were then introduced.  
  
We regularly refer to the reports and use the on-line analysis tools to guide and inform our continuing work to improve awareness and develop effective interventions to minimise the incidence and impact of workplace stress in our Trust.  
  
We plan to repeat the survey in about 18 months to assess the impact of our interventions and identify any new stress hot spots that might have developed." 

 

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Tool: StressMeter™ - Employee Wellbeing Survey

Business type: District Council

Location: Northern England

Budget: £3,800 - including paper questionnaires.

Timescales:  "From Council approval it took us 2 weeks to finalise our additional questions and issue our welcome letters. Data was collected within 28 days and the reports were presented 10 days later. We continue to use the StressMeter™ system on an on-going basis." 

Background: "As part of our on-going employee wellbeing programme we have previously carried out a Council wide Employee Attitude Survey. Although this included some questions related to workplace stress, we wished to comply with the latest HSE guidelines, identify stress hot spots within the council and compare our position with other Local Authority and Public Sector employers.  
  
The survey process was co-ordinated by our Health and Safety advisor using the StressMeter™ system. In addition to the standard HSE stress questions and filter questions identifying our locations, service areas and job roles we also added a number of questions related to diet, work/life balance and activity. The additional questions were formulated within the council and we were able to gain feedback on training and interventions that had already been introduced. To facilitate less structured responses we also included an open question allowing text comments to be entered. 
  
A welcome letter with log-in information was sent out to all our employees and about 20% of our staff then requested paper questionnaires. These were returned direct to health-e-solutions™ for processing. We included information on our Council web-site with daily updates on participation and all data was collected within 4 weeks."  
  
  
Outcome:  "Over 75% of our employees participated in the survey allowing us to produce detailed reports for the entire Council and for all our individual service areas.

We were able to identify a number of areas within the council where workplace stress was being managed effectively, particularly in the areas of Control and Demand. By identifying best practice in these areas we were able to provide positive feedback and encourage transfer to other parts of the Council. The text responses were especially useful in understanding a number of stress “hot spots” and guiding subsequent focus group discussion. 
  
In addition to an extremely useful HSE compliant stress risk assessment for the entire Council, each Service Director received a detailed report for their own area and this was then used to develop their own action plans and interventions as part of our broader “Improving Working Lives” agenda. This has included introduction of stress awareness and stress management training for line managers and focus groups and further investigation for our employees working in stress hot spots.  
  
A detailed benchmark report against other Councils allowed us to compare our results for each of the individual HSE Management Standards and we continue to monitor this comparison on a regular basis.  
  
We plan to repeat the survey in about 18 months time and will next time include a number of additional aspects previously covered by our Employee Attitude Survey"

 

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Tool: StressMeter™ - Employee Wellbeing Survey

Organisation: College of Further Education

Location: Central England

Budget: £4,800

Timescales:   "4 weeks to agree our additional questions and issue welcome letters. Data was collected within 6 weeks and the reports were presented 7 days later." 

Background: "Following a review of our sickness and absence records our Health and Safety advisor had recommended that we carry out a workplace stress risk assessment to identify any workplace factors that might be impacting our employees and comply with the latest HSE Management standards.  
  
We defined a number of additional questions specifically related to an education establishment with input from our HR and staff representatives and the survey was then presented to all our employees by the college principal as an internal Employee Wellbeing Questionnaire. 
  
Our employees completed the survey anonymously and the survey process was managed externally by a specialist provider using the StressMeter™ system. While the majority of employees completed the survey on-line, some requested paper questionnaires and these were supplied with postage paid envelopes." 
  
Outcome:  "Over 60% of our employees participated in the survey allowing us to produce detailed reports for the entire College and for specific areas like teaching, non teaching, faculty, administration, full and part time etc. The overall results were presented to the staff within 2 weeks of completion of the survey through a series of briefings and in our internal newsletter.

We were able to use the filter questions to identify groups of employees and then compare their results with other measures like vacancy, turnover and absence rates. We now do this on a routine basis. 
  
We were able to identify a number of areas within the college where workplace stress was being managed extremely well and some where recent organisational changes appeared to have caused a negative impact.  
  
Stress hot spots were explored in more detail with Department Heads and some focus groups were then carried out with representatives from the affected groups and individual action plans were then developed. This led to specific initiatives in the areas of managing workload and resources, communication, staff development and training. We will monitor the impact of these measures on an on-going basis and by repeating our staff survey during the next academic year.  
  
By comparing our results with those for other Colleges we were able to identify areas within the HSE Management Standard that are potentially high stress factors in an educational environment and then compare our results with similar organisations carrying out similar work."