About the survey
As part of our people and culture initiatives and our aim to become an Employer of Choice, we’re taking an active approach to the way we listen and respond to our colleagues.
Our Colleague Voice Survey invites colleagues and volunteers from across the charity to share their thoughts and feelings about working and volunteering at Barnardo’s. Our aim is to run these surveys on a regular basis; every one – two years.
The survey is a temperature check on our culture and helps to inform our people and culture initiatives and what we should focus our attention on.
The survey is conducted by our external partner, The Happiness Index to ensure confidentiality and anonymity for colleagues.
We ran the first survey with The Happiness Index in 2021 and repeated the same survey in May 2023. We’ve made good progress in this time, but it's important we keep momentum going and use this opportunity to understand more about how people are thinking and feeling across the charity.
Key findings from the 2023 Colleague Voice Survey
You can read the full survey results as well as watch our Leaders Live event where we discussed the charity-wide results in more detail.
Response
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More than half (50.2%) of colleagues took part, which is a 7.2% increase (like for like) on our 2021 survey. The response rate is 47% including our As & When colleagues (who weren’t included in the survey in 2021).
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The average score for the survey was 7.7, an increase of 0.1 on the 2021 survey.
Top scoring questions
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Colleagues answered more positively on 25 out of the 29 core questions compared with 2021.
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Our highest scoring question was ‘How committed are you to helping Barnardo’s succeed?’, which scored 8.9.
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Alongside commitment and pride, we also scored highly on themes such as relationships, meaning & purpose, values and equality, diversity and inclusion.
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We’ve seen significant improvements in our scores on trust and work/life balance.
Areas for improvement
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Our lowest scoring question was ‘How satisfied are you with the opportunity to progress your career here?’.
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Interestingly, this is also an area where we’ve improved most since 2021, so it’s clear we’re on the right track but have more work to do.
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Personal growth and development is an area we will be focusing on in the coming months with new learning and development offers and our new approach to progression.
Comments
We received 14,000 comments in areas on:
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Safety – the focus being on work/life balance. A mixed bag with some appreciating the flexibility while others feel lonely.
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Enablement – the focus being on workload and the need to go ‘above and beyond’ to keep up with demand.
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Personal growth – A mixed response as some feel that training opportunities are on offer while others feel these aren’t available to them.
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Relationships – Very positive in this area with many comments about working in a supportive team.
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Happiness – This generated the most comments and is a result of all the above.
Guidance for senior leaders/managers (who manage a team of 15 or more)
If you manage a team of 15 or more people, you will receive a link and unique log in from The Happiness Index to view your team/department results.
These results will provide you with insights on how your people are thinking and feeling.
Once you have read and digested the results, we’d encourage you to put time in with your team to discuss them, celebrating the positive findings and identifying the key areas you’ll be focusing on and seeking to improve.
Additional support materials
Plan, prepare and explore your results – a guide to help start conversations with your teams/departments.
Download comments or automated report – a how to video for downloading comments or an automated report to share with your team.
The happiness/engagement model – guidance from The Happiness Index which explores the happiness/engagement model, and how you can use it to understand and motivate your team.
How to use surveys to better manage your team – articles from The Happiness Index (Happiness Index login required) exploring how to use surveys and other information to better manage your team, change and specific aspects of leadership such as equality, diversity and inclusion.
Insights for managers into what motivates colleagues – an animated talk from Daniel Pink (and his book) revealing some valuable insights about what motivates colleagues.
The psychology behind happiness and engagement – an advanced exploration by Daniel Kahneman’s international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow.