Societal engagement staff survey

Every few years we run a staff survey to look into what public engagement activities staff have taken part in, what motivates them to get involved, what barriers they face, and to what degree they feel that there is a supportive culture for engagement at Imperial. We have run the survey in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2025.

The survey is extremely important for a number of reasons:

• It is the largest investigation into societal engagement activities across the whole College and provides key data to evidence the level of participation for our funders and policy makers.
• It helps us to understand the collective impacts our engagement is having on public and internal audiences.
• It highlights where our enabling activities, such as training and awards, are facilitating engagement and where more focus is needed.

You don’t need to have taken part in any engagement activities to get involved – in fact, we love to hear why!

The Societal Engagement staff survey 2025 is now closed. We are currently reviewing and analysing the results, the findings will be shared in the Autumn term.

Key findings from the 2019 and 2017 surveys

• Participation in engagement is increasing. In 2019 62% respondents had carried out some engagement activity in the past 12 months, rising from 59% in 2017 and 50% in 2015.
• The most popular activities were giving a public talk, schools outreach, involvement in an open day and participating in the Great Exhibition Road Festival or Imperial Lates.
• Engagement at or near our White City campus rose from 3% in 2017 to 8% in 2019.
• 21% respondents in 2019 said that their main job at Imperial included a specific remit for engagement (same as 2017).
• Successful engagement funding rose from 6% to 7% as part of research proposals, and 5% to 7% in separate proposals from 2017 to 2019.
• 21% respondents had completed engagement training within the past year in 2019, from 12% in 2017.
• Whilst time, money and opportunities to get involved remained the most frequently mentioned barriers to engagement work, support from department or faculty was less of a barrier in 2019 compared to 2017.

You said, we did

We listen to all feedback gathered from our community and act on insights shared to improve our work. Following previous responses to the staff survey on societal engagement, we have completed the following actions:

• Adding new masterclasses to our training offer, including around digital engagement and participatory research.
• Increasing our internal communications to raise awareness of societal engagement opportunities, including more news stories, newsletter content and working with staff and student networks.
• Launching new funding pots to support societal engagement projects and ideas, including the Collaboration Kickstarter, and making our ongoing Societal Engagement Seed Fund more responsive and flexible.
• Increased and supported volunteering opportunities in societal engagement, including through the Great Exhibition Road Festival and Imperial Lates.
• More opportunities to get advice, mentoring and support around societal engagement, including regular 1-to-1 drop in sessions with engagement staff.
• Increased and varied opportunities to engage with diverse public audiences through our programmes and spaces, including at the Invention Rooms in White City, youth programmes, family workshops and creative partnerships.
• We have also made changes to the survey itself to aid clarity and inclusivity - including adding more options, broadening beyond a STEM focus, and changing the format of questions.