Frequently Asked Questions

In-line with our Corporate Workforce Strategy, we need to ensure that the people who are employed by the council feel valued, engaged and motivated.  The main way we can measure and monitor this is by asking you for your feedback via an employee survey.  This will provide employees with a voice and identify how you feel about working for Walsall Council, what you enjoy, which areas require some improvement and understand your aspirations whilst at work.  The survey will also be used to measure employee engagement and satisfaction.

Surveys will be sent to employees on or soon after 5 October 2023.

Staff with a walsall.gov.uk email address, or with a personal email addresses registered on OneSource, will be sent an email containing a link to an online version of the survey. Staff without an email address will receive their survey via post to their home address.  Pre-paid return envelopes will be provided.

Walsall Council has commissioned MEL Research, an independent research agency to administer the survey on our behalf.

MEL Research is a social research company based in Birmingham. MEL Research is a full member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and are bound by the MRS Code of Conduct.

All surveys will be sent directly to MEL Research. The electronic survey is hosted by MEL Research using a software package with a fully secure web-link that directs all responses through to the MEL network. As such, it is not possible for your responses to be retrospectively retrieved in any way on your local computer or drive.

Paper surveys will be sent with a freepost return envelope so that employees can post their completed survey directly to MEL Research.  

The research will allow the council to assess its workforce’s journey through the monitoring of trends since the first survey in 2017 and last in 2021. In doing so it will ensure that key actions are identified and developed that best meets its workforce needs both now and over the coming years.

Once developed and approved such actions will ultimately be delivered and assist the ongoing development of the Workforce Strategy.  Findings from the survey will also be used to inform the Organisational Development strategy and inform the direction of learning and development opportunities for the wider organisation.

Once the survey is closed MEL Research will produce a written report of results which we will make available to staff later in the year. The report will show results at organisation level. In order to pull out trends in views, analysis by other sub-categories such as directorate, gender, age and ethnicity will also be completed.

The results will inform a subsequent period of staff engagement in 2024, followed by action planning to identify and implement priorities for change and improvement.

To provide a more in depth understanding of views, and building on the results of the survey, a subsequent period of staff engagement will take place where a number of staff focus groups (discussion groups of around 8 people) will be held. The groups will be facilitated by MEL research. You can register your interest in taking part in a staff focus group at the end of the online survey on via the survey webpage. Alternatively you can email employeesurvey@walsall.gov.uk

MEL Research is bound by the Market Research Society Code of Conduct to ensure that all survey responses remain confidential. At no time are individual responses attributable to a member of staff, either in any data or reports provided to Walsall Council.

For the purpose of administering the survey, Walsall Council has provided MEL Research with your name, address / email. Your personal information will not in any way be linked to your survey responses. MEL Research will only use your personal information for the purpose of administering the survey. Once the project is complete MEL Research will delete all personal information.

The survey you have been sent (in the post or online) carries an ID number which is unique to you. The ID number is purely so that MEL Research can manage reminders which will be sent to those who have not responded by a certain date. At no time will anybody outside of MEL Research know who has and hasn’t responded to the survey and your ID number will not be used to link your survey responses to your contact information.

When analysing the results we are looking to pull out trends in views, not to highlight those of individuals or small groups of staff. To ensure confidentiality, teams or sub-categories of less than 10 staff will be incorporated within larger staff groups as part of the higher level analysis.

Any open text comments provided will be proof-read by MEL Research, who will, in line with the Market Research Society Code of Conduct, make every effort to remove any identifiable information. Please note that comments may be reported back as they are written, so please avoid including identifiable information. Any comments submitted may be included in the report of findings.

The section ‘About You’ includes some personal / sensitive questions about you. Although these questions are voluntary, your answers are important as they will help us better understand the results of the survey by allowing us to identify any trends or differing views amongst groups of employees. When analysing the results we are looking to pull out trends in views, not to highlight those of individuals or small groups of staff. To ensure confidentiality, teams or sub-categories of less than 10 staff will be incorporated within larger staff groups as part of the higher level analysis.

The survey will remain ‘live’ until midnight on Monday 6 November 2023.  Postal surveys should be received by 7 November.

Completion of the survey is voluntary, but we would like as many employees as possible to take part. The higher the response rate, the more representative and meaningful the results will be.

The survey is your opportunity to tell us what YOU think - whatever you have to say about the council, positive or negative, we want to hear it. If you do not complete the survey your views will not be represented.

If you require the survey in larger print or an alternative format please call the MEL helpline 0800 073 0348 or email employeesurvey@walsall.gov.uk

Alternatively, you can contact the MEL Research helpline and one of their trained interviewers can conduct the survey verbally with you over the phone (see Who do I contact if I need help or have a query?).

There are a few ways you can do this:

• Contact the free and confidential MEL Research helpline on 0800 073 0348.
• You can speak to your line manager
• or email employeesurvey@walsall.gov.uk