Cultural staff survey

Submitted by valentina on Wed, 03/09/2016 - 15:53
Type: 
Questionnaire / Survey
Objectives: 
Collecting and analysing data
Awareness raising, education, training, and knowledge management
Improving working conditions and work environment, monitoring of salaries
Evaluation and data monitoring
Description: 

The  GenderTime Cultural Staff Survey tool is based on the Culture Analysis Tool developed by UKRC-WISE, as part of the HEFCE funded national HE STEM programme with the aim of sharing good practice in gender equality in higher education.

 

Methodological Approach: 

Content wise it focuses on four areas:

1.            Participation and promotion practices

2.            Workplace culture

3.            Leadership and management commitment

4.            Institutional reputation and social responsibility

The survey was set up as online version for the project purposes, which allowed a better dissemination of the questionnaire within the institutions/organizations.

Before delivering it, the GenderTime teams were all intensively involved in tailor making the survey to fit their specific national and cultural context but also to fit the intended target groups (e.g only faculty members or including non-faculty members).

Two are the main phases of which this tool consist of:

1. Data collection: Partners in GenderTime were responsible for organizing the data collection at their own institution. The strategies used for promoting the participation at the survey were similar: emails to all targeted employees, announcements in internal newsletters, or e.g. via the company internal platform. Partly the commitment from senior management was used to motivate staff members to participate and also some kind of ‘survey ambassadors’, who informed colleagues about the aim and importance of the study. Some partners reported that they had ‘neutralized’ the survey announcement due to strategic reasons. Deleting words like ‘gender equality’ should help to activate also male staff members to participate and support their inclusion.

2. Data analysis One of the team provides analysis of the data developing also a special web application in order to allow all partners to retrieve the absolute gender- segregated data of their institutional survey plus the overall cross-national data. The latter one also was made available as women and men only comparison between the countries.

Benefits: 

The Cultural Staff Survey is a very good tool for getting information on staff member‘s perceptions of working conditions, management structures and organizational environment not only with respect to gender equality matters. For achieving gender equal workplace conditions it is important to focus on the prevalent organizational structure itself. A tool like this Cultural Staff Survey offers the possibility for an on-going reflection of the implementation process on a structural and individual level, which is important since organizational culture is not a static concept, it is fluent, and therefore it is necessary to explore the beliefs and behaviors within institutions.

Notes: 

Too many surveys going on at the same time, can cause  at least in big institutions, a serious problem of reliable feedback.