Work Resources and Workload Factors survey

Why: It is important to identify the work resources and workload factors because they impact aspects such as success at work, achieving goals, cooperation, well-being at work and the employee commitment. 
Contents: Web-based employee survey containing questions about psychosocial work resources and workload factors. 
Result: A report of the results for the entire group of respondents and possible subgroups with at least five responses in the group.

• For whom? 
  The tool can be used by all workplaces. In particular, it may benefit small and medium-sized workplaces where a similar survey is not yet in place.
• Benefits? 
  The survey provides everyone with an opportunity to participate in the assessment of the work resources and workload factors. The results of the survey help form an overview of the situation, which makes it possible to identify the most important resources and workload factors of the work community. After you have formed a shared understanding of the situation, the aim is to identify and select the issues that you will begin to develop systematically. Once identified, it becomes easier to select the resource factors you want to strengthen, and the workload factors you aim to reduce at the workplace. By conducting the survey regularly, it is possible to monitor changes in employees’ experiences and evaluate the success of the development efforts. 

1. Planning phase
   • Introduce the survey in your organization (download the set of PowerPoint presentation slides)
   • Download the questionnaire template (pdf)
   • Make sure that your workplace is committed to developing the activities after the survey.
   • Schedule the response time for the survey (2 weeks is usually sufficient)
   • Schedule the meetings for reviewing the results
   • Distribute information about the survey and its implementation to all employees in advance
2. Create the survey for your organization
   • If you want group-level reports in addition to the reports at the organization level, it is possible to add a list of teams to the questionnaire. You will receive the instructions for adding the teams when you create the survey for your organization.
   • Create the survey about 1–2 weeks before starting the survey. The link will be valid for 4 weeks. Take this into account when planning the response time. It is advisable to set 2 weeks as the response time. 
     
     Create the survey for your organization
3. During the survey response time
   • Send the survey link to the participants from your own email.
   • Follow the number of responses during the survey. After you have created the survey, you will receive a report link that allows you to monitor the accumulation of responses. A remainder message is necessary especially if it looks like the response rate will remain below 60 per cent.
   • If necessary, remind the respondents by resending the link to the survey. Send the reminder to everyone because the survey software does not store information about who has already responded.
      
4. Downloading and distribution of reports
   • When the survey response time has ended, download the report through the report link you received.
   • The reports can be downloaded for 8 weeks after you initially created the survey for your organization.
   • The report contains instructions on how to utilize the results.
   • You can also use the Work Resources and Workload Factors Workshop to create an action plan to strengthen one resource factor or to reduce one workload factor. 

Responding to the survey takes place anonymously. The organization conducting the survey will be able to examine the results only as averages and only if the number of responses is sufficiently high so that the responses of individual respondents cannot be identified. Data at the level of organizations and units can be reported if the number of respondents is at least five per reported group. Individual responses will not be visible to the person in charge of the workplace.

The order form completed when the survey is deployed and the responses to the survey are recorded in the Louhin service (Data Rangers Oy) used by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. No identification data is recorded in the response, and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health cannot identify individual respondents. The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health will not disclose the data to third parties.

The experts of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health will use the recorded data at the national level to describe the work resources and workload factors, for example, in different sectors and in organizations of different sizes. The findings can be used in the Institute's communications and may be reported as descriptive indicators on the Institute’s website, for example. Individual organizations cannot be identified from the information published by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.