Setting Up Your Survey

To set up a survey, you need to first sign upopens a new window for a free Guarding Minds at Work user account. By registering, you’ll be able to administer surveys and generate reports. 

Please note: Only one organizational representative who is authorized to administer the survey is required to sign up for an account. Those taking the survey do not require an account.

When you log in to your account, you’ll enter a secured section of the website, which is your Dashboard, where you enter your organization’s information. Your survey data will remain confidential and secure. Only aggregate and non-identifying information from all surveys is used for continual improvement of Guarding Minds at Work. 

There are three tabs:

• Dashboard Home provides you with instructions and is where you can administer active and closed surveys once they have been set up.
• Create New Survey is where you enter information to create a new survey.
• Edit My Information is where you can change the information you entered during sign up, including if you want to change administrators.

There are three options available to assess psychological health and safety in a workplace. We recommend completing the Guarding Minds Organizational Review first, followed by the Employee Survey. The Stress Satisfaction Scan is available when the survey is not practical.

1. 1. Organizational Review

   This is a set of worksheets to be completed manually by a leader or leadership team that supports their own assessment of psychological health and safety in their workplace. It helps them connect existing human resources and benefits data, such as performance, absenteeism, complaints and disability to each of the psychosocial factors.

   There are a variety of ways to use the Organizational Review:

   Use in advance of the employee survey to compare with the employee survey result. If you complete the Organizational Review and enter the results on the Guarding Minds Dashboard (via the Organizational Review Input button within your Active Survey), you can generate a report that compares leadership perspectives with the employee survey once you have completed and closed your survey.

   Use instead of a survey as a helpful exercise for small business owners, team leaders or any organization in which an employee survey is not possible or practical. The organizational review will lead to free and helpful resources that support your organization to take action on psychological health and safety.

   Read more about conducting an organizational reviewopens a new window.

2. 2. Employee Survey

   This is an automated resource that allows you to sign up and send out a link to a comprehensive survey to employees. Employee identity is kept confidential and the aggregated results provide a snapshot of how the organization is rated by employees on measures that are known to impact psychological health and safety in the workplace. See Frequently Asked Questionsopens a new window for more information about confidentiality. You can view or print a copy of the Survey Statementsopens a new window to review in advance.

3. 3. Stress Satisfaction Scan

   This scan provides six items for employees to rank the extent to which they are stressed or satisfied at work. This short survey is suitable for your organization if:

   • There are concerns about the cost, resources or logistics in completing the Guarding Minds employee survey.
   • You want a quick snapshot of stress versus satisfaction in your organization. This can be also be done along with the organizational review for a more complete assessment.
   • Your organization recently completed an employee survey that did not assess stress satisfaction and you want to use this survey to supplement it. Note that the Guarding Minds employee survey includes this measurement, so the Stress Satisfaction Scan is not necessary.
   • You want to assess if there is evidence for the need for more significant investment in psychological health and safety in your workplace.

For more information read Understanding the Stress Satisfaction Scanopens a new window.

Get a summary of your survey results for only the employees who meet the segmentation criteria you specify. This report also includes your Organizational Review results for comparison. To protect anonymity, results are only available if there are 10 or more respondents matching your segmentation criteria.

To generate a segmented report for a specific group(s), please keep the following in mind:

• Selecting only one segmentation option will generate a report for everyone who chose that option. Example: everyone residing in Saskatchewan.
• Selecting multiple segmentation options within one question will generate a report for everyone who chose those options. Example: everyone residing in Saskatchewan and everyone residing in Nunavut.
• Selecting segmentation options across multiple questions will generate a report for everyone who chose that exact combination of options. Example: only individuals who reside in Saskatchewan AND are a union member.

For any single segmentation option selected with less than 10 responses, a segmented report will not be generated. This safeguard exists to protect employee confidentiality by reducing the chance that responses can be tracked to specific individuals.

The segmentation questions are:

• What department/branch do you belong to? 
• Where do you currently reside? 
• What is your gender?
• Are you a member of a union?
• Do you mostly work in a setting where other employees are present or do you mostly work alone? 
• In your job, are you responsible for managing others? 
• In your job, about how many employees do you supervise on a day-to-day basis? Please indicate how many employees report to you directly and how many employees report to you indirectly (that is, how many employees report to supervisors who report to you.)  
• Are you a shift worker?
• What type(s) of shift(s) do you work? 
• Are you Indigenous or a member of a visible minority (a racialized group)?
• Are you 2SLGBTQI+?
• Are you an immigrant to this country?
• Are you living with a physical and/or mental disability (invisible or visible)?
• Are you a caregiver of children or adults?

If you do decide to segment, choose only the segmentation options which are critical to your ability to address psychological health and safety in your workplace. For more information, please consult Guarding Minds - Demographic questionsopens a new window. 

The following questions can also be chosen but note that the report will only show you the number of responses; you cannot generate a segmented report using these questions.

Keep in mind that by adding more questions, it will take each employee longer to complete the survey. Only ask those questions that are meaningful in terms of the actions you will take. For example, if you will not choose different actions based on age or education, there is no reason to add these extra questions.

The optional questions are:

• How old are you?
• What is the highest level of education that you have attained? 
• Which of the following best describes your seniority level within your company or organization?
• For approximately how long have you been working for your present employer (in any capacity)? 
• For approximately how long have you been in your current position with your present employer? 
• On average, how many hours in total do you work per week? 

After choosing what will be asked in your survey, send the link out to all employees and give them a deadline to complete it. Do not send the survey link to employees until communications about the survey have been distributed which was described in Creating a planopens a new window.

An email template that you can fill in and modify will be automatically sent to you once you activate your survey. The template will include a link to your survey. You can use this template or make your own, but be sure to include the link in either case and forward the email to each of your employees. You will also be able to access this link via the Get Survey Link button in the Active Surveys section under the Dashboard Home tab.

Monitor active surveys in your Dashboard Home tab to see the number of responses so far. Send out reminders if there are not sufficient responses. It’s ideal to have 100% of employees respond, to give you the most accurate measurement of psychological health and safety in your workplace.

When you've reached your deadline and/or have sufficient responses, it’s time to close your survey, using the Close Survey link in Active Surveys in the Dashboard Home tab. This will prevent any further input and allow you to generate and print your results.

Once you have closed the survey, you will be able to click Generate Report, via the Closed Surveys section in your Dashboard Home tab.

You’ll be provided options to generate a full report or a segmented report. To have a segmented report, you must have chosen segmentation criteria when you created the survey and have sufficient respondents. See Demographic questionsopens a new window for more information on segmentation.