Wellness@Work Comprehensive Survey

Wellness@Work invites you to complete the Wellness@Work Comprehensive Survey opening on Monday January 29 at 1:30pm. We value your feedback as we remain committed to supporting the holistic health of our faculty and staff and ensuring we provide services and resources that you deem most valuable. You are the expert in your role and your thoughts about your work environment matter, so please share your perspective.

As a U of G employee, you will receive the survey link in a mass email communication on January 29th inviting you to complete the survey. The survey is open until February 16, takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and must be completed in one sitting. Participation is anonymous and confidential.

Managers and supervisors are asked to allow employees sufficient time to give the survey their full attention during working hours.

In 2017, the University of Guelph conducted its first comprehensive wellness survey through Wellness@Work. Much has changed since 2017 and it is important that we understand your current experience to best support your health.

Survey details:

U of G has contracted third-party experts from Vancouver Psych Health + Safety Consulting to conduct this survey, designed to measure the 13 psychosocial factors identified in the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace in addition to collecting feedback on current and future wellness initiatives. This team will help us ensure the survey is accurate and useful, while guaranteeing the anonymity, privacy, and security of the information gathered. No employee at U of G will be able to see or access your individual responses.

Aligning with our values of community, collaboration, and integrity, aggregate survey results will be shared with all faculty and staff. 

With the information we collect, we hope to:

  • Provide leaders with their department or college-specific data to support area-specific actions that will improve workplace wellness on a unit level;
  • Inform University of Guelph decision making that impacts employee health and wellness;
  • Adjust healthy workplace programming to fit your needs;
  • Update the Wellness@Work Strategic Plan to reflect the unique needs of our community.

We strongly encourage you to complete the employee wellness survey. The greater the participation, the more confidence we can have in the results and the better we can make improvements that are supportive to all employees.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Wellness@Work Advisor Isidora Nežić at nezici@uoguelph.ca.

Here are initiatives we've pursued as a result of your feedback over the years, since 2018:

Survey Frequently Asked Questions

The survey will be open over three weeks this winter, January 29 – February 16, 2024. The last time a comprehensive wellness survey was offered was in 2017.

The survey is open to faculty and staff employed at U of G. This includes: Regular full-time Tenure-Track and Tenured faculty, Regular full-time employees, Reduced workload Tenure-Track and Tenured faculty, Contractually limited faculty, Part-time non-student staff, Temporary full-time non-student staff, Postdoctoral fellows, Sessional Lecturers, Graduate Service Assistants.

No; however, we encourage all faculty and staff to participate because the higher the response rate, the more representative the survey data will be. With representative survey data, we will be better able to identify and focus on the priorities that will make the greatest difference to your experience.

This survey is designed to measure the 13 psychosocial factors identified in the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace in addition to collecting feedback on current and future workplace wellness initiatives. The survey will have three sections including: psychological health and safety, wellness, and background information.

The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the Standard) is a set of voluntary guidelines, tools and resources intended to guide organizations in promoting positive mental health and preventing psychological harm at work.

Psychosocial factors are work conditions that can have either a positive or a negative effect on employee psychological health and safety. The 13 psychosocial factors are: organizational culture, psychological and social support, clear leadership and expectations, civility and respect; psychological demands, growth and development, recognition and reward, involvement and influence, workload management, engagement, balance, psychological protection, and protection of physical safety.

U of G is committed to supporting faculty and staff success. We are committed to supporting the well-being of the whole person for all University of Guelph staff and faculty through a comprehensive, integrated, evidence-informed workplace health promotion strategy. To implement changes and objectively understand our community’s experience we need to give all faculty and staff the opportunity to provide direct, confidential, and anonymous feedback on their workplace experience. Your workplace wellness experience matters and is Wellness@Work’ s priority. The survey is your opportunity to share feedback on your perspective.

A comprehensive wellness survey was originally planned in 2020 to follow the first U of G comprehensive wellness survey in 2017. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and shifting of priorities to support employee needs, the survey was delayed. The Wellness@Work Pulse Surveys were shorter, containing only close-ended questions and collecting very high-level information. The comprehensive survey uses validated and reliable scales to comprehensively understand your experience in the workplace specifically related to psychological health and safety, as well as awareness of and interest in our wellness benefit and program offerings. It also collects more detailed demographic data. Senior leaders will receive their department/college/unit level results to inform unit-level supports. The pulse surveys did not collect this level of rich information.

Yes, it’s best practice.

No. U of G’s survey consultants, Vancouver Psychological Health + Safety Consulting Inc, will administer the survey, analyze the data, and produce survey reports. Your answers are anonymous and individual responses will be kept confidential. No employee of the U of G will be able to see or access your individual responses. Information from a particular group will only be analyzed if there are a minimum of 10 respondents to uphold anonymity. If any identifying information is shared in responses to open-text questions, the consultants will de-identify responses during the thematic analysis and will only report those findings on an organizational level. Departmental-level reports will only be reported in aggregate. 

U of G uses a third-party consultant, Vancouver Psychological Health + Safety Consulting Inc, to administer the survey and analyses survey data. All individual survey responses will be confidential and anonymous. Information from a particular group will only be analyzed if there are a minimum of 10 respondents to uphold anonymity. The data will be maintained in an encrypted, password-protected form on a secure, high-end Canadian server owned by the Consultants and external to the University of Guelph. This practice complied with Canadian privacy law.

No. Because your responses are anonymous, once you complete the survey, you will not be able to withdraw or change your responses.

U of G and Guelph-Humber are coordinating separate surveys during the same timeframe to ensure the full employee base that Guelph-Humber is represented, which also includes those individuals employed by Humber. The Guelph-Humber survey includes employees who have employment contracts both with U of G and with Humber on the Guelph-Humber campus. This allows supports to be developed that adequately support all Guelph-Humber employees and take into account their unique experiences working at the Guelph-Humber campus. In the Wellness@Work Comprehensive Survey, we also want to account for the experiences of U of G employees at Guelph-Humber as we look at institution-wide indicators. That is why Guelph-Humber employees are being asked to complete both surveys.

Yes. If you receive a separate survey link from Guelph-Humber please take the time to share your experience in both surveys. These are two separate surveys and data will not be shared between the two, including two separate databases to ensure confidentiality and data privacy. Questions related to psychological health and safety may be similar, however, questions in the wellness and background information section are tailored to the specific organization.

 

Thank you to everyone who completed the 2017 Wellness@Work Survey. The responses we received will help us identify and better understand workplace factors that affect the psychological health and safety of University of Guelph faculty and staff.

On April 4th, 2018 we hosted a Town Hall event to share the results from the survey. Around 300 employees attended this event, with others viewing the live-stream recording online. 

We have captured some of the key findings from the survey results in this infographic, which we invite you to share with your colleagues.

Infographic of Key Findings of Wellness@Work Survey

Please follow the hyperlinks below to access the full survey report and supplemental report, which identifies key themes from the open text-box responses:

Watch the recording of the Town Hall event by following the hyperlink below:

We are committed to working together to create a healthier workplace for all faculty and staff.

We hope you will join us in our efforts to continue bettering our workplace and creating a thriving workforce, organization and community.