Using Staff Surveys to Make Your Meetings Better

Maybe you’ve been in a meeting when an administrator posed an open-ended question, like “How should we modify the bell schedule for the upcoming field day?” Everyone had an opinion, but half of the teachers were too tired to speak up. A few offered suggestions, and then two teachers loudly and passionately argued their opposing stances until time ran out.

At that point, how to modify the schedule had still not been agreed upon. Thus the administrator’s dreaded wrap-up: “We’ll need to meet again to decide.”

This situation can be avoided with a short homework assignment before the meeting. Just like students, teachers don’t necessarily want homework, but they’ll find it worthwhile if it means more productive meetings.

In the scenario above, the administrator could send out a short survey to all faculty and staff asking teachers to vote on a couple of options for modifying the bell schedule. Interested teachers respond with their vote and perhaps add an optional comment, and then the results are shared out before the meeting so that everyone is aware of the prevailing sentiment.

When the meeting starts, instead of opening a debate—and a can of worms—the administrator opens the floor for a few last-minute statements, and after a few minutes of discussion, they announce the decision, generally based on the survey results but occasionally going in a different direction for reasons that are clearly explained to the staff. With that out of the way, the rest of the meeting can be spent in more productive ways.

Surveys are a simple but powerful tool that can improve decision-making, amplify teacher voice, and help administrators identify issues before they become larger problems.

Why Survey Faculty and Staff?

An administrator could simply devise a modified bell schedule, so why hold the meeting or survey staff? As Jennifer Gonzalez has written at Cult of Pedagogy, “I think there’s one practice that should be done by any school that wants to improve, and it’s simple and free: Ask the people who are directly affected.”

Teachers are among the people most plugged into the day-to-day goings-on of a school—they understand the realities of their classrooms, their students’ needs, and the school culture. But not every teacher feels comfortable speaking up at meetings—and some of those who do feel comfortable don’t speak up because they don’t want to prolong the meeting. Surveys give teachers another way for their voices to be heard and for administrators to hear from more teachers. Teachers who are hesitant to speak up in meetings for whatever reason may feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts in a written survey.

2 Survey Purposes

1. Decision-making surveys: Many times, administration needs teacher and staff input to make an informed decision. The responses on surveys may offer insights that administrators have missed or didn’t know about. For example, in that planning for a modified schedule for field day, a longtime teacher at the school might mention that 10 years ago there was a morning assembly that was quite successful. Without a survey, this historical tidbit may not have emerged.

2. Pulse checks: While decision-making surveys focus on a specific choice, pulse checks help leaders monitor the overall health of the organization.

The name comes from the medical practice of checking a patient’s pulse. A health-care professional cannot diagnose every condition from a patient’s pulse, but it provides a quick snapshot that may indicate whether further attention is needed.

Pulse surveys serve a similar purpose in schools, asking teachers whether they feel supported by administration, whether their workload is manageable, or whether communication systems are effective. Over time, these responses can reveal trends that may not surface in faculty meetings.

If administrators send out brief, periodic pulse checks with consistent questions, they can more easily track data over time to spot trends in what is going well and what may need attention.

Time-Efficient and User-Friendly

How to get started? Ask only necessary questions—any unnecessary questions may deter a responder from finishing the survey. For example, a pulse check might simply ask two open-response questions:

1. What is going well?
2. What could be improved?

Decision-making surveys should include just a few key questions directly related to the decision at hand.

Make sure the survey is easy to access. I once made the mistake of sending a complicated “ranking priorities” survey to faculty. It was clunky and hard to read on a laptop—and impossible to read on a phone. Unsurprisingly, only 13 out of 45 faculty members answered my poorly designed survey—and I could have avoided this debacle if I had just asked someone to test it out before I published it.

Will teachers complete your survey? We’ve all received surveys from companies asking for a few minutes of our time, and we’re quick to delete them. (Yes, my dentist is fabulous, but does she really need feedback after every single visit?) Survey fatigue is real, which is why effective surveys must be concise, purposeful, and user-friendly.

You can increase the odds that people will respond if you make your surveys anonymous. Teachers and staff should feel certain that their identities are not known so they can provide their genuine feedback without high stakes.

A Survey Is Only a Tool, Not an Action

A time-efficient, focused survey can provide valuable feedback for decision-makers in any organization. But what really matters is the action taken as a result of the survey. If your faculty and staff wonder how their responses are being used or never see any improvement, they’ll lose interest and stop responding.

Be transparent with your team about the survey results and how you have used them in your action items—and be sure the action items are relevant to the data. An exhausted team experiencing low morale is unlikely to be re-energized with a pizza lunch or jeans day. Instead, consider more relevant adjustments: Do deadlines need to be reconsidered? Can some meetings be reduced or canceled? Would a particular speaker or training be beneficial on the next professional development day?

Listening as a Leadership Practice

Surveys are not a replacement for conversations, relationships, or face-to-face meetings. They’re a tool that helps leaders listen more effectively. When used thoughtfully, surveys give teachers a voice, provide administrators with actionable information, and help schools identify challenges before they become crises.

Most important, they communicate a powerful message to faculty and staff: Your voice matters, and we are listening.