You are provided with the anonymous comments of staff answering the two open questions that are shown in the box below. These are questions that have generated the best responses after testing.
- What is your opinion of staff wellbeing? What is going well and what could be improved?
- What one thing would have the biggest impact on improving your wellbeing and that of other staff?
When clicking on ‘Comments’ in the menu you are taken to the responses to the first question and use the arrow by the question title to move to the second question.
Comments can be filtered by support staff, teaching staff and leaders, using the drop-down menu across the top. As there are a lower number of leaders in most schools, particularly smaller ones, their comments will be shown as teaching staff, unless five or more comments are received.
You can also search comments for any keywords you think may be important in your school, for example, workload. Comments will provide you with further insight into why staff have scored as they have within the different Management Standards.
Review the comments as a whole and look for trends and try not to react emotionally or take any as personal criticism, which isn’t always easy. It is just feedback and you may or may not want to take action. Whether true or not they are the perceptions of staff and it may also be the only way some of them will bring matters to your attention.
If you uploaded staff records and invited staff to take the survey, you will also have the option to highlight comments using a flag, so you can quickly see any that you want to prioritise, and also be able to respond to them.
Responding to staff comments
This will only be available for surveys run after 1st March 2020 and where staff invitations were sent through Welbee (staff records were uploaded to your dashboard). If this is not available there will not be a reply arrow after each comment.
You can respond to individual staff comments and address their concerns, provide specific feedback, ask for more information, and/or engage with them as needed. These responses and ongoing conversations will remain anonymous unless the staff member decides to reveal their identity.
To respond to staff comments click on the reply arrow to the right of any comment where you would like to reply. A box opens and you simply type in your message and send. This will automatically email this to the person making the comment (you will not know who they are). They will have the opportunity to read and respond to you and if or when they do, this will update the comment.
You will see a new message that has been received in your menu to the right of the word Comment. Then within ‘comments’, the message will be highlighted. You will need to click the message and this will open and you can choose to respond again if you wish.
When receiving a message from you, your staff will be clearly told that this is anonymous and they have not been identified to provide them with the confidence needed should they want to provide further information without revealing their identity. We have found in some cases they will come forward and talk to you, though it is important this remains their choice.
You can click on any comment at any time to open up and review any conversations between you and your staff members.
The opportunity to read comments will also be available to all those staff you have given full and viewing user rights.
Those with full user rights will also be able to respond to staff comments. This means you can share the workload as a senior team or delegate this to specific team members.
When a staff member reads a response they will know who has sent it – the name of the logged-in user will show above the response. However, the identity of the staff member will never be revealed unless they choose to do so.