« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
2 Introduction
2.1 Survey Objectives
This report presents the results of the Scottish Executive ( SE) 2006 Employee Survey, covering all 7,413 staff and secondees in the Core Departments and Agencies/Associated Departments. It was issued for 2 _ weeks from 25 September to 13 October 2006. The development and running of the questionnaire and on-line survey were conducted in-house by the Office of the Chief Researcher ( OCR), with ORC International working on the analysis and reporting elements of the survey.
The Executive has undertaken an annual survey amongst staff employed within the organisation, its Agencies and Associated Departments since 2000. In 2005, a review of the survey was conducted in order to address the declining response rate. The review highlighted that the survey had lost credibility because of its perceived lack of focus, commitment from management and visible action.
The result of this review saw the implementation of a new five year survey plan, which involved a rebranding of the survey from staff survey to Employee Survey, a proactive marketing campaign to encourage participation, redesign of the survey content to focus on issues concerning employee engagement and a new survey process which included a greater focus on action planning and action monitoring.
The aim of the survey is to provide a comprehensive picture of employees' perceptions of the SE and measure the level of employee engagement with the organisation and identify the priorities for improvement throughout the organisation.
2.2 The Questionnaire
The emphasis of the questionnaire concerns how engaged staff are with the organisation and what factors encourage or hinder this. In order that responses to the questions can be tracked during the 5 year survey plan, the majority of the questions in the 2006 questionnaire have remained the same as those in the 2005 questionnaire.
2.3 Distribution and Return Process
All staff and secondees within the main SE (Core Departments and Agencies/Associated Departments) were included in the survey conducted by the SE, using a mainly online methodology. Paper based questionnaires were distributed where staff did not have access to the computer network or for the Agencies/Associated Departments that chose not to take part in the online survey. ORC International provided second class reply paid envelopes for questionnaires to be returned directly to ORC International. Once returned, responses in the questionnaires were data entered and themed according to ORC International's strict quality control procedures. The questionnaire for inward secondees had some questions omitted that were not directly relevant to them - these questions are marked 'not secondee' in this report.
« Previous | Contents | Next »