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Flexible Work Survey 2022

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Updated December 12, 2022

Thank you to the thousands of employees who completed the flexible work survey. Your insights will help us shape the future of work at Stanford for the better.

Most schools and units participated in the survey, with an impressive 56% average response rate. Your input will help us better understand our work practices as we look toward the future of work - how we plan for collaborative on-site work; our meeting experiences; the levels of connection in teams and with colleagues; and workspace effectiveness. You'll receive updates from your school or unit leadership in the first quarter of 2023.

Have questions about Flexible Work at Stanford? Contact your school or unit HR team or email flexiblework@stanford.edu.

Frequently Asked Questions

What action will schools and units take based on the survey results?

The insights from the survey will allow schools and units to examine work practices, physical workspaces, and other methods to improve connection and collaboration between team members—for example, setting up anchor days for teams, implementing a new collaboration technology tool, additional training or resources, etc.

How will the university as a whole use the survey results?

Aggregated results will be shared with university leadership to provide visibility into our new ways of working—where people work most frequently, their experiences with meetings and collaboration, their levels of connection—and their suggestions for improvements. This information will inform strategy regarding our future of work at Stanford and help prioritize our areas of focus for central support and processes.

How is confidentiality maintained? Will my manager know it’s me who’s recommending something change in our team?

Your responses are strictly confidential and will not be shared with anyone in any way that might identify you. Data collected will be anonymized, and we will not report on very small  groups of participants. No identifying information from text responses will be shared. Data from this survey are not intended for academic publication. More information is below: 

Your privacy and the anonymity of your survey responses 

How do you keep my answers confidential? Who will have access to the data? Will my supervisor or advisor or others in my department/work unit be able to tell how I responded? 

Anonymity and the confidentiality of your responses 

Your responses to this survey are strictly confidential and will not be shared with anyone in any way that might identify you. Data collected from the survey will be anonymized by the UHR Workforce Analytics team. 

I know my responses are confidential, but still I’m concerned about being identified. 

We understand that people who identify with a relatively small demographic or identity group within a department, work unit or larger organization may be concerned about being identified once survey results are published, and that this may have happened in the context of past surveys administered by other groups/organizations. 

For example: 

I am one of two people who identify as members of a minority group in my work unit. When the survey results come out, won’t everyone know who I am anyway? Won’t they be able to guess how I responded? 

I am the only one in my department who is a caregiver for small children. Won’t my manager know which responses were mine when results are shared? 

Your privacy and safety is a key guiding principle. 

We will not be reporting findings broken out by demographic/identity categories when there are few people represented in one of those categories, no matter the level of aggregation. For example, if we find that there are only two Native American employees in a school or unit, we would never post statistics that break out Native Americans as a separate group within that school. We will not be providing demographic/identity breakouts for small departments or work units (e.g., less than 50) or any other level of reporting that could potentially allow others in your organization either to identify you directly from your demographics or to identify how you may have responded based on data and findings shared from the survey. 

Why does the survey ask for personal demographic information?

Demographic information will be correlated to survey data at a summary level to provide insights into how experiences of flexible work may vary related to gender, caregiver status, disability and race or ethnicity.  These questions are optional and participants can choose to skip them if desired.