A good staff wellbeing survey asks about five things: workload, leadership and support, relationships with colleagues, how people are actually feeling, and what would help. Keep it short, make it properly anonymous and run it at a sensible point in the term. Then tell staff what you found and do something they can see within a few weeks.
That last step is the easiest one to skip. The survey goes out, the results come back, a chart turns up in a governors’ report and staff notice that nothing has changed. Next year fewer of them fill it in. So this post gives you example questions, but it spends just as long on what to do with the answers.
If you’d rather not start from scratch, our free editable staff wellbeing survey has questions ready to adapt.
Example staff wellbeing survey questions
Most of these work best as statements people rate from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Group them, so you can see where the problem is as well as that there is one.
Workload
- I can usually get my work done within a reasonable working week.
- I know which of my tasks matter most and which can wait.
- The meetings I go to are a good use of my time.
- Which one task takes up time you think it shouldn’t? (open)
Leadership and support
- I feel able to tell my line manager when I’m struggling.
- When I raise a concern, something happens.
- Decisions that affect my work are explained to me.
- I feel trusted to do my job.
Relationships
- I have someone at work I can talk to on a bad day.
- Staff here help each other out.
- I feel I belong here.
Wellbeing itself
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your wellbeing over the last two weeks?
- I get a proper break at lunchtime on most days.
- I’m sleeping well enough during term time.
- I’d recommend this school as a place to work.
What would help
- What one change would make the biggest difference to your wellbeing at work?
- What do we already do that you’d want us to keep?
- Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
The lunchtime question earns its place. If people are eating at their desks, or not eating at all, you’ll want to know, and it’s one of the few things on this list a school can fix by Monday.
How many questions should a staff wellbeing questionnaire have?
Fewer than you think. Aim for something people can finish in about ten minutes, which is about as long as you can ask of a teacher in term time. In practice that means a couple of dozen rated questions at most, and two or three open ones. That’s a rule of thumb, not a standard. Every question needs a reason: if you can’t say what you’d do differently depending on the answer, cut it. (The moment you think “just one more question” is usually the moment to stop.)
Validated wellbeing scales exist, and they’re worth using if you want to compare your results with other schools or track change over several years. Your own plain questions are better at showing what to fix in your school. Some schools use both: a short validated scale for the headline number, their own questions for the detail.
How do you get staff to answer honestly?
People answer honestly when they believe it’s safe and believe it’ll make a difference. You have to earn both.
For anonymity, use a tool that doesn’t record names or email addresses, and say so plainly at the top. Be careful with questions about role, department or length of service. In a primary school with fourteen staff, “teaching assistant, more than ten years” might describe one person. Only ask for a breakdown where every group is big enough to hide in, and don’t report any group of fewer than five or so.
Timing matters too. Avoid the weeks when people are most stretched, or you’ll be measuring the week rather than the school. Teachers will know the third week in November. Report writing, mock exams and the fortnight after an inspection are just as bad. Early in a half term, when people have had a rest but still remember last term, tends to give a fairer picture.
Tell staff before the survey goes out what will happen to the results and when they’ll hear back. Then keep that promise.
What to do with the results of a school staff wellbeing survey
Share them, all of them, within a few weeks. Staff will already have a fair idea what the survey will say, so a summary that skips the awkward bits does more harm than the bits themselves. Thank people first. Then show the main findings, and say honestly what surprised you.
Then pick two or three things to act on. Not twelve. Look for the gap between what matters most to staff and what’s scoring lowest, and choose things the school can change: meetings, marking, email expectations, cover, how decisions are explained. Ask staff to help shape the response, perhaps through a small group drawn from across the school.
Workload answers often point to tasks that nobody would miss. Before adding anything new, ask what could stop. A lot of what fills a teacher’s to-do list is there because it has always been there, or because someone else put it there.
Use the same core questions next year, so you can see whether anything moved. And when you share the results, remind everyone where to get support if they’re struggling now: their line manager, the school’s employee assistance programme if it has one, or Education Support’s helpline. An anonymous survey can’t tell you who needs help, so make it easy for people to ask.
Building a wellbeing action plan for your school
A school wellbeing action plan doesn’t need to be long. For each priority, write what you’ll do, who’s responsible, when staff will see a difference and how you’ll know. Show it to staff, then revisit it each term. Keep what’s working and drop what isn’t.
Plan for the crunch points as well. If your survey says pressure peaks in late autumn, plan the weeks before it now. Cancelling a couple of meetings or easing the marking load for a fortnight costs little, and staff will see you listened.
There’s also a part the whole-school plan can’t reach: what keeps each person well, and what they notice when they’re starting to slip. Many schools give a staff meeting or INSET slot to everyone writing their own personal wellbeing action plan. It covers what helps them cope, their daily routines around sleep, food and exercise, the traps to avoid, and their early warning signs. Our course How and why to create a wellbeing action plan walks through each section, with templates you can use in that session. Writing the plan matters as much as using it, because it’s where people work out what helps.
Is a primary school staff survey any different?
The questions are much the same. The difference is size. With a small staff, anonymity is harder to protect, so drop most of the demographic questions. A paper survey with a sealed box, or an online form run by someone outside the leadership team, can help. Include teaching assistants, office staff, midday supervisors and site staff: their answers are often the ones leaders know least about.
Small teams do have one advantage. You can talk through the results together in one staff meeting and agree the next steps in the same room. If morale is the main concern, our free guide to raising staff morale has practical ideas to sit alongside the plan, and there’s more on staff and pupil wellbeing on our health and wellbeing topic page.
The survey tells you how your staff are doing. Our course How and why to create a wellbeing action plan helps with what comes next. It’s for heads, wellbeing leads and any member of staff, and shows how to write a practical plan for yourself, a colleague or a pupil, and how to run it as a whole-staff session, with templates and slides to download.