Top 5 staff feedback topics for UK charities in 2024

We had the pleasure of working with CharityComms on their Salary and Organisational Culture Survey 2023. The survey gathered feedback from 346 professionals with responsibility for marketing and communications in UK charities of all sizes and causes.

The survey asked how UK Third Sector organisations are gathering employee feedback, including the key areas where feedback would be most valuable.

When we asked where employee feedback will be the most important this year, many respondents selected topics that we know are key in not-for-profit organisations.

The top 5 were:

1 Reward / Pay and Benefits

Understanding your people’s perceptions about pay, benefits and non-monetary rewards can be just as important as reward benchmarking.

Diving into this topic can help you uncover whether staff feel that they are fairly compensated, or how they might be struggling with the cost-of-living or other aspects of financial wellbeing.

Some questions that you could use to gather feedback on Reward/Pay and Benefits are:

• I am rewarded fairly for the contribution I make in my job
• My pay is competitive compared with other similar organisations
• This organisation offers a good benefits package

2 Organisational Change

We find that when faced with significant change – such as new leadership, relocation, or some sort of cultural change – organisations take one of two positions: X or Y.

X: “There’s little point in surveying employees during organisational change because the results are going to be very poor. We’ll do our next survey after the change has been completed and the dust has settled.”

Y: “It’s important that we listen to employees during organisational change so that we can understand how change is playing out for them and gather feedback to inform how we manage the change process better.”

You will know the best approach for your organisation, but we find that regular employee listening can be the key to successful organisational change. It’s great to see from these results that organisational change is a key topic for feedback this year.

Organisational change surveys enable organisations to use employee feedback to contribute to the overall success of change initiatives, identify pain points, and track the impact of change over time.

You can include questions in your surveys about the change itself:

• I believe the change will be good for the organisation
• I understand how the change will impact my role

You can include survey questions about the management of change:

• Our Leadership Team is managing change effectively
• I’m kept informed of what is happening

And you can ask questions about engagement and wellbeing:

• I would recommend the organisation as a good place to work
• I feel my job is secure

3 Wellbeing and Mental Health

Promoting good wellbeing and mental health is good for employees and it’s good for organisations.

In our white paper Measuring, understanding and improving the wellbeing and mental health of your people, we set out the impact of wellbeing and mental health on engagement, productivity, absence, and retention. The white paper also presents strategies for designing wellbeing surveys and improving the wellbeing and mental health of people in your organisation.

We’d encourage you to ask your people about the causes of stress at work and where they need more support. With this information, your organisation will be equipped to provide preventative – rather than reactive – benefits and training.

Some questions that you could use to gather feedback on Wellbeing and Mental Health are:

• My workload is too much and stops me doing a good job
• This organisation helps employees to achieve a good work life balance
• I often feel stressed at work

4 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Taking a deep-dive into EDI can be a great way to understand the experiences of different groups – giving diverse voices an equal opportunity to share where in the organisation they do or do not feel included and respected.

In our blog 5 Ways to use your Employee Survey to understand Diversity and Inclusion we explore using the right questions, digging into intersectionality, and tracking progress on your EDI initiatives.

Some questions that you could use to gather feedback on EDI are:

• People here are treated equally irrespective of ethnicity, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation or religion
• I feel that I belong I this organisation

5 Values and Culture

Many organisations find that culture is critical to achieving mission success and serving beneficiaries well. We also find that culture is a key driver of engagement.

Feedback plays a pivotal role in an organisation’s culture: whether or not people feel listened to is essential to whether they feel valued, and bringing staff along with cultural change can determine whether or not they buy into it.

Some questions that you could use to gather feedback on Values and Culture are:

• This organisation has strong values which are put into practice
• Different parts of the organisation work well together

These areas can be addressed with pulse surveys for a deep dive into the topic and to demonstrate that they are priorities.

Alternatively, organisations can include questions on these topics in their overall full engagement survey. This enables connections to be made between topics, and relationships between factors to be identified. For instance, many organisations will find a connection between wellbeing and engagement by including wellbeing questions in their full engagement survey.

Do these topics resonate with what your organisation is gathering employee feedback on this year? Get in touch to speak to a survey expert at Agenda about developing your employee survey approach.

Author: Camilla Clarke

Business Development Manager, Agenda Consulting