Staff survey starting point for climate change and sustainability work

Bristol PCT Climate Change and Sustainability Steering Group conducted a survey in order to find out staff views on climate change. The aim was to inform the PCT’s work on climate change and sustainability.

Comments by Dr Angela Raffle, Consultant in Public Health, NHS Bristol:

In my organisation we found it very helpful to do a staff survey as a starting point for climate change and sustainability work. This made people feel that they had been asked for their views. It also surprised the senior managers considerably who realised they were pushing on an open door not a closed one. Design of the survey obviously depends crucially on the nature of your workforce. If you have lots of community staff visiting people at home you need a different survey design. If you are an acute hospital you probably need a different survey design. This was designed for a workforce that is mainly office based. Several contacts from around the place have asked if they can borrow our survey questionnaire, which of course they can. We borrowed the one from Bristol City Council in the first place which was helpful. The other crucial aspects in the design were: 

• Piloted first on a few people
• Make sure to get it looked at by a staff group (we have a ready made group that vets things going out to staff)
• Champion it through the Chief Executive and directorates and through your staff briefings so that it is seen as very important
• Turn it into a web-based format so people just need to click on a link and fill in radio buttons instead of messing about with paper printouts and hand completion
• Make sure to feed back to staff on the findings and thank them and tell them what action you are taking as a result of the survey findings

To see the web-based questionnaire click here.

To download the questionnaire in word click here.

To download the final report in word click here.