This article is written by Yvonne Rinkart, a UK civil servant and Apolitical Insider Fellow

As a reader of Apolitical, you’ll know well the pressures on today’s workplaces under lockdown.

We know, for example, that public servants need good approaches to remote working, internal communications, and technical solutions for working away from the office, to name but a few.

In the last months, public servants have been seeking ways to become more productive during the pandemic, including prioritisation, soft skills, emotional intelligence and the opportunity to bring positive change.

We have also begun to explore ways to stop the pandemic impacting our mental health, and we have collected ideas to improve our wellbeing and mental health at work.

To support public servants through the challenges posed to them by Covid-19, many organisations have turned to surveys. As our organisations seek to capture their workforces’ needs in a comprehensive and data-driven manner, they need your support.

Any survey is only as good as the data it collects, and therefore I would like to make the case why you should complete your organisation’s next survey about your wellbeing.

All change for wellbeing in lockdown

The wellbeing of public servants is an important topic. Covid-19 is amplifying existing concerns and adding new dimensions to them.

In the UK, for example, concerns about stress and resilience among public servants have been discussed for a few years, while those around the impact of remote working on mental health had been a theme in conversation long before lockdown.

Right now, we are evaluating the positives and negatives of remote working. We are simultaneously tackling risks of isolation and burnout, worries about lockdown presenteeism and concerns about staff absence due to mental ill health, and we are becoming increasingly aware that lockdown is widening existing inequalities in terms of mental wellbeing.

This situation makes supporting a workforce through Covid-19 a challenge with formidable complexity. To meet this challenge, many organisations have turned to surveys to seek input from their employees directly, to establish what kind of support can best meet their needs and to track the effectiveness of this support.

Why should you complete that survey?

To begin with, just getting a survey about your wellbeing is a good sign. As a Business Transformation Project Officer, I know that conducting and analysing surveys often requires the time and skills of specialists from across your organisation. When you receive a survey, you can be sure in the knowledge that your organisation is willing to make such an investment, and should take it as a clear indicator that your organisation cares about your wellbeing. Moreover, surveys generate facts about your wellbeing, which are hard to ignore, and as such they indicate that your organisation is prepared to take action.

A wellbeing survey can deliver valuable insight into the support you and your colleagues could benefit from most

So, while it may feel like these surveys are just another item in your inbox, or another addition to your to-do list, a carefully designed survey, which asks the right questions and makes sure everyone is heard, can be a powerful tool to help you shape your organisation’s approach to wellbeing.

So to underscore the point, here are five reasons why you should complete that survey:

Organisations need information to target their activity

Covid-19 has transformed the ways public servants work almost overnight, which means we need to find new ways to support colleagues. This affects both efforts to continue to provide support, which would be delivered face-to-face, in new formats, and to provide new support targeted specifically at the challenges associated with the pandemic and lockdown. In the face of these twin challenges, a wellbeing survey can deliver valuable insight into the support you and your colleagues could benefit from most, including the best ways this can be delivered.

Provide a view across the organisation and provide opportunities for learning

More often than not, the data in such surveys can be broken down to compare and contrast different parts of the organisation. This gives your organisation an opportunity to identify best practices and provide opportunities for mutual learning. In my survey, grateful colleagues took the time to identify managers or team leaders who had supported them, identifying them as champions for wellbeing.

Underrepresented groups can be highlighted

Surveys provide an opportunity to ensure that all groups of people are heard, and surveys will often compare and contrast experiences of different colleagues. If some parts of the survey may not reflect your experiences, look out for text boxes, which give you an opportunity to describe them in your own words. Indeed, there is an increasing awareness of the limitations of surveys, and good analysts will use this information to consider the limitations of their survey and improve it in the future.

Track progress and changes priorities

As lockdown continues, eases or tightens, the support you would like to see from your organisation may change. Surveys, particularly when conducted serially or set up to be comparable with previous surveys, give valuable insights into how your feelings change over time. So, if your organisation asks you to complete more than one survey, take this as an opportunity to check in and make sure that the measures are working for you and that any new needs around this support can be met. This fosters a culture of continuous improvement around wellbeing support in your organisation.

Start a new conversation about wellbeing

Surveys can also help identify issues your organisation has not previously considered. Lockdown may already be changing our approaches to wellbeing, and organisations are seeking new approaches to discuss wellbeing in a locked-down world. Where surveys offer text boxes for you to add your own thoughts, take that opportunity to contribute your thoughts to help shape the conversation in terms that are relevant for you.

Next steps

The longer lockdowns continue, and as feelings change in tandem with lockdown restrictions the more important it will be for organisations to keep track of the wellbeing of their employees. In pop psychology, commentators have written about the 5 (or 7) emotional states during lockdown. It looks likely that we are in for another roller-coaster ride as lockdown restrictions begin to tighten in parts of the UK and in Europe, and this will make it more important to keep a close eye on the wellbeing of public servants.

By taking out a few minutes of their busy schedules to complete their organisations’ surveys, public servants can help ensure that they can access the right support — Yvonne Rinkhart

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