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The Office of Human Resources is committed to reinforcing a culture where employees at the university are supported, valued and empowered. The pulse survey is one way of collecting feedback to inform priorities, programs, and decisions regarding the employee experience.

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The pulse survey is an opportunity to provide feedback on where the university is doing well and where the university can make improvements. First piloted in January 2022, the university's first full implementation of the survey was October 2022.

Like its name suggests, a pulse survey takes a quick assessment of the perspectives of participating employees. The short, simple, and consistent question set allows for frequent collection and timely reporting of insights. While this kind of surveying is not meant to take the place of other more comprehensive surveys (i.e., employee satisfaction or engagement surveys), Pulse Surveys allow the university to respond quickly to feedback received and track changes over a relatively short amount of time.

Kinds of Questions

The pulse survey in composed of 15-20 multiple-choice questions designed to assess employee perspectives on key topics such as workplace culture, communication and empowerment. For example:

1. I have access to the resources (e.g., materials, equipment, technology, etc.) I need to do my job effectively.
   • Strongly Disagree; Disagree; Neither agree nor disagree; Agree; Strongly Agree

While open-ended questions are a vital part of collecting feedback from employees, the quick, repetitive implementation of the pulse survey is not conducive to the collection or analysis of comments. All questions are optional.

Participation

Benefit-eligible staff within participating business units are invited to complete the pulse survey. Participation is optional. Participants will receive an invitation to participate via email.

University pulse surveys are typically open two times during the calendar year, once in the fall semester and once in the spring semester, for one week at a time. The survey should take approximately five minutes to complete.

Data Security

We want you to feel comfortable sharing honest feedback. Here’s what you need to know about how data is managed: 

• Individual employee survey responses will remain confidential when the Office of Human Resources analyzes the survey data. Data is combined and reported in aggregate. Individual responses are not reported or shared. 
• To collect information necessary to see trends (i.e., differences between groups within the university) and minimize errors in the reporting (i.e., only one response per employee), surveys are not anonymous. 
• To protect the identity of participants, data is only reported if five or more responses are collected for any group.

For More

If you have questions about the survey, please reach out to the Learning and Organizational Development team. Thank you in advance for sharing your perspective.