Feedback and dialogue with our people

Across the University we use a variety of methods of gathering feedback and supporting ongoing dialogue with staff as part of our commitment to ensuring everyone feels valued, heard and has the opportunity to provide feedback. 

For a decade, roughly every two years we have run regular surveys for colleagues on their experience at work. In 2014 we started working with external surveying providers, a move which bolstered colleagues’ trust in these exercises and increased our response rates. In 2020, the Senior Management Group agreed a new approach to surveying, with a move to more responsive surveying, working towards a more frequent, pulse survey approach[1]. To gather feedback across the whole University, we now run the Colleague Engagement survey each year. This approach (introduced 2021) allows us to be more responsive to colleagues’ rapidly changing needs and concerns.

In addition, many areas of the University have developed their own listening and dialogue methods, such as suggestion boxes, which complement the cross-institutional surveying. Colleges, Schools, Services and teams also have a variety of different ways to capture feedback, and we have piloted a number of different approaches across the institution. Supporting materials generated by these pilots are available to colleagues: please email haveyoursay@glasgow.ac.uk.

These methods, as well as our cross-institutional engagement survey, enable us to: 

  • Support our desire to nurture a caring and inclusive University community with a focus placed on the health and wellbeing of our people.
  • Be more responsive to rapidly changing needs and concerns including being more able to ‘correct course’ on interventions to ensure they offer maximum value to the organisation.
  • Position the University as an attractive, future-thinking employer.