Employees who have a council email address provided the majority of responses with 3,655 employees (88%) completing the survey.
502 employees who don't have a council email address – mainly frontline workers (12%) also completed it.
Here's a breakdown or responses by department:
- 37% Children's Services (1528)
- 28% Adult Social Care and Health (1157)
- 26% Commissioning, Communities and Policy (1097)
- 9% Economy, Transport and Environment (373)
What you told us
Your wellbeing, morale and mental health
Generally the majority of people said that they had felt positive or very positive (71%) with 25% feeling not positive and 4% not at all positive. 90% of respondents felt positive about the support of their colleagues and team members. However, only 67% felt positive about their work/life balance.
Ways of working, workload, caring responsibilities and health concerns for themselves and their families was a common theme among the employees who said they weren't feeling positive.
Ways of working
The majority of respondents said that their work had completely changed or changed a lot during the pandemic (56%) and 11% said their role had not changed at all. This differed for frontline workers with 67% saying their work had completely changed or changed a lot during. Only 7% indicated their work had not changed at all.
85% of employees felt that they had adjusted well to new ways of working. This dropped to 71% for frontline workers.
78% of respondents overall had been working from home and of these only 22% had previously worked from home once a week or more. 74% of those working from home said they wanted to work from home between 2-5 days a week.
Only 13% of frontline workers have been working from home. 54% had not worked from home before and 34% didn’t want to work from home in the future.
Most respondents benefitted from less travel, increased flexibility, work/life balance and fewer interruptions and distractions and 17% said there were no limitations to remote. A lot of people however, reported fewer opportunities for social interaction, that they were unable to undertake their full duties from home effectively, and that they had difficulties in accessing ICT equipment.
Employees said the changes that have benefited them most were working from home, followed by flexibility in working arrangements and working hours for those with caring responsibilities and the extended flexitime bandwidth. Being able to communicate using ICT was also mentioned a lot.
17% of employees thought that none of the changes introduced by the council had helped them during the pandemic. This rose to 36% for frontline workers.
Our support to you
85% of respondents feel they have been very well or fairly well supported during the pandemic and 83% felt very confident or fairly confident in how senior managers have handled the pandemic. This dropped to 72% for frontline workers.
86% of respondents indicated that they had definitely, or mostly received information they needed to do their job effectively, with 10% indicating they had partially received the information they needed and 4% saying they hadn't.
The future
77% of all respondents said that they wanted to see positive changes continue, with the most common being working from home following by reduced travel, improved work/life balance and continued flexibility in working hours and duties for those with caring responsibilities. But only 43% of frontline workers said there are positive changes they would like to see continue with improved wellbeing support being the third-highest response.
Employees commented about being able to continue using ICT communication methods like Skype and Teams followed by more regular meetings with their manager, benefits to the environment and continued flexibility.
59% of respondents said they had concerns about the future with social distancing in the workplace, risk of infection, cleanliness and reduced flexibility in working arrangements being the areas of most concern.
We had a high number of comments about employees' thoughts about the future.
32% of comments were concerned that the impact of the pandemic on the economy will impact budgets and therefore lead to job cuts.
21% of comments were concerned that working from home will be made compulsory. Employees are concerned about the lack of social interaction from being isolated at home and not having access to peer support. This also has a knock-on effect of being able to maintain a work/life balance.
Employees are also concerned about the difficulties of working from home due to lack of space and equipment.
10% of comments were concerned about the way we deliver services in the future. There were concerns of reverting to 'old' ways of working and also how we will adapt to new ways of working.
6% of comments were concerned about the uncertainty around what the future holds and if the further lockdowns will be implemented.
24% of comments from frontline workers were concerns that their roles expose them to a greater risk of infection.