Confidentiality

Absolutely.  One of the benefits of an outside agency like People Insight administering the survey is that all your answers go to them. At no point will anyone at Imperial, including senior leaders and managers, be privy to individual responses. This means that you can be completely honest with your responses without them being tracked back to you personally. People Insight administers the staff survey in accordance with strict confidentiality policies and takes this very seriously. 

Results are presented back to Imperial as percentages of favourable, neutral, and negative responses per question, e.g., 59% of people agreed or strongly agreed with a statement. Results are never linked back to an individual. We use the CID number only as an alternative to a unique email address to track response rates and link organisational data to the response. This allows results to be cut by Faculty, Department, etc. As a further measure to protect respondent anonymity, People Insight applies a minimum threshold of 10 for results to be shared; e.g., if fewer than 10 responses are submitted for a department, no data will be available.

It is important that we can group staff feedback by campus, job level, and area. This helps us identify priorities across different parts of Imperial and determine whether we need to take action on a university-wide, faculty, division/department, or team basis. Demographic information (e.g. gender, ethnic background) will help us to identify whether there are any equality issues we need to explore further. 

No. As the survey is hosted on People Insight's web server, no one at Imperial has access to the responses at any point during the survey. People Insight is bound by the Market Research Society's code of conduct for employee research and promises to maintain the anonymity and confidentiality of all survey respondents.

People Insight will know the email addresses of those who have and have not completed the online survey, but they will not give these names to Imperial. Once received by People Insight, the email addresses and completed surveys are separated. Although People Insight can identify the email addresses of those who filled out the survey, it can’t match those addresses to the completed results, so it has no record of who said what. You will remain anonymous throughout the process.

No. Names and references that could risk identifying an individual will be removed, so no one will be identified. 

Your responses will go straight to People Insight, which means Imperial will not be able to see any individual submissions. The results will be analysed in a way that prevents any person from being identifiable. You will remain anonymous throughout the process. When you are writing the free-text comments, you will get the following warning: Please take care when providing this feedback. 

Please note that any comments that you make will be repeated verbatim in the feedback report from People Insight. Although they will not reveal the name of the person who provided the comments, you should consider whether you could be identified from your comments and, if so, whether you would wish to be. If you are concerned about this either before or after writing your comments, please contact People Insight directly. 

Yes, your voices shape our future.

Having a voice turns everyday experiences into real improvements. Honest feedback helps leaders understand what’s working, what isn’t, and where change is needed, so decisions are based on reality rather than assumptions. It also builds trust and engagement: when staff speak up, they help shape a better workplace for everyone, and that voice drives accountability, progress, and meaningful change for the overall organisation.