The essentials
- This set asks about working conditions that affect health: how much work, how much control, how much support, how clear the role, how change is handled, and whether behaviour in the team is acceptable.
- Eighteen questions across the six standards.
- Use a five-point frequency scale: never, seldom, sometimes, often, always.
What this survey is for
This set asks about working conditions that affect health: how much work, how much control, how much support, how clear the role, how change is handled, and whether behaviour in the team is acceptable. Those six areas are the HSE Management Standards, the framework UK employers are expected to work to on work-related stress.
Keep the focus on the work rather than the worker. Questions about someone's resilience, sleep or mood move you towards health data you have no business collecting in a staff survey, and they imply the problem is the person. Ask what the organisation controls and can change.
The core question set
Eighteen questions across the six standards.
Demands
- My workload is manageable over a normal month.
- I can meet my deadlines without regularly working beyond my hours.
- My work pattern lets me take the breaks I am entitled to.
Control
- I have a say in how I do my work.
- I can vary the order of my tasks when it makes sense.
- I am consulted before my working pattern changes.
Support
- My manager helps me when work becomes difficult.
- I know where to get help with a work problem.
- I get the practical support I need, not only sympathy.
Relationships
- I am treated with respect by the people I work with.
- Unacceptable behaviour is dealt with when it happens.
- I know how to report bullying or harassment.
Role
- I understand my responsibilities and where they end.
- I am rarely given conflicting instructions.
- I know what to prioritise when I cannot do everything.
Change
- Changes to my work are explained before they happen.
- I am consulted about changes that affect my job.
- I know who to ask about how a change affects me.
Open question
- What part of your workload would you change first? Optional, free text.
Response scale and scoring
Use a five-point frequency scale: never, seldom, sometimes, often, always. Reverse-worded items in the published HSE tool need care, so if you adopt their wording keep their scoring rather than mixing the two.
Score each of the six standards separately and report them as a profile, not a single wellbeing number. One organisation can have healthy demands and poor change management, and an average hides exactly the thing you would act on. Cut by team, shift and role, and always report the response rate. Where a team scores badly on demands and control together, that combination predicts the most harm and should be first in the queue.
Adjust it for your sector
Workload pressure has a different shape in every sector. Keep the six standards and change the examples.
Professional services
Add "My utilisation target is achievable alongside my other commitments" and "I can decline additional work when I am at capacity". Expect busy-season peaks, so run it at a representative point and report by grade in professional services firms.
Construction and property
Add "Programme pressure does not push me into unsafe shortcuts" and "Travel between sites is accounted for in my hours". Report site and office separately, and keep the format completable in a welfare cabin.
Technology
Add "On-call does not routinely disturb my rest" and "I have enough uninterrupted time to do focused work". Interruption and fragmented attention are the specific demands issue here, so ask about them rather than about total hours.
Banking
Add "Regulatory deadlines are resourced, not absorbed" and "I can flag a capacity risk without it reflecting on me". Keep conduct and whistleblowing routes signposted and separate.
Healthcare
Add "Staffing on my shifts allows safe care" and "I can take my breaks during a shift". Include questions about violence and aggression from patients or the public under relationships, and collect across a full rota including nights.
Energy
Add "Fatigue risk in my rotation is managed" and "I can stop work on safety grounds without pressure". Report by crew and rotation, and avoid sampling only the start of a rotation when people are fresh.
Media and agencies
Add "Pitch work is resourced rather than added to my delivery load" and "Last-minute client changes are managed, not simply passed on". Report by account team and run it after, not during, a pitch peak.
Public sector
Add "Service demand is matched by the resources we are given" and "I am consulted on changes that follow policy decisions". Use grade bands, and pair the results with existing health and safety reporting.
Education
Add "My marking and preparation fit within a reasonable working week" and "Cover arrangements do not routinely eat my planning time". Run it mid-term and report by department and phase, not school-wide only.
Universities
Add "My workload allocation reflects the time the work actually takes" and "Research, teaching and administration demands are balanced across the year". Report academic, research and professional services staff separately.
Hospitality
Add "My rota is published far enough ahead for me to plan" and "I get my breaks on a busy shift". Keep it to ten questions on a phone and include seasonal staff with a tenure cut.
Retail
Add "Staffing matches the trading pattern on my shifts" and "I am supported after a difficult customer incident". Include abuse from the public under relationships and report by store.
Manufacturing
Add "Line speed and targets are achievable safely" and "Overtime is genuinely voluntary". Use shift demographics, run it at handover, and keep language simple for second-language speakers.
Anonymity, consent and small teams
This survey touches health, so handle the data carefully. Do not ask for diagnoses, symptoms, medication or sickness history: those are special category data under UK GDPR and a staff survey is the wrong instrument for them. Keep questions on working conditions and the answers stay ordinary personal data.
Set a reporting threshold of at least five responses and suppress below it. Tell people who reads free text, and give a clear, separate route to occupational health, an employee assistance programme or a manager conversation for anyone who needs individual support. If a response discloses a risk to someone's safety, act on it through the proper route and do not wait for the survey report.
From results to action
Work on the standard with the worst profile, in the team with the worst profile, with the people who can change it. Demands problems are usually fixed by resourcing, sequencing or stopping work, not by resilience training, and offering a wellbeing webinar in response to an overload result reliably damages trust.
Put each agreed change where it will be followed: a goal with an owner where it needs a plan, a standing item in one-to-ones where it needs conversation, and a review date in the next round of this survey. Record what you decided not to change and why. Managers also need their own capacity examined, since they are often the most overloaded group in the results.
Frequently asked questions
Can we ask about mental health directly?
Not in this survey. Health information is special category data and needs a lawful basis, a clear purpose and far stronger safeguards than a staff survey provides, and asking invites people to disclose something you then hold. Ask about the conditions that affect health, and provide separate confidential routes for individual support.
How is this different from an engagement survey?
Engagement asks whether people feel committed and recognised. This asks whether the work is designed in a way that keeps people well, using a framework your regulator recognises. The two overlap on workload and manager support, and the wellbeing set gives you the detail needed to act on those items.
How often should we run it?
Annually for the full set, with the demands and support questions riding along in a quarterly pulse. More often than that produces fatigue without producing new information, since the fixes are usually structural and take a quarter or more to show up.
About New Dynamics
New Dynamics is a Bristol-based performance management business. Workload problems surface in goals and one-to-ones long before they reach a survey, which is where our software is useful. Book a demo to see how the follow-up is tracked.
Turn the guidance into your next conversation.
Choose one action from this resource, agree who owns it and set a date to review what changed. To explore how your process could work in New Dynamics, bring your current workflow to a demonstration.