Phase two of Western Australia's recovery from COVID-19 will start on 18 May, and many employees will start coming back to work. Local governments will reopen some facilities and services, and start to bring staff who have been working from home back to the office.

The mindset and mental health of returning workers will be very different to that of those who left the workplace a couple of months ago.

COVID-19 has created stress and uncertainty for everyone and each member of staff was impacted differently. Many will be concerned about job security, finances, health and safety - for themselves and their families. Their resilience has been tested and local government leaders will find that some staff may struggle with keeping their emotions in check while others will continue as if nothing has happened.

Managing this group will present new challenges to local government leaders. The key to any manager's success in this situation is consultation, which can provide insight into the mental health and wellbeing of their staff. Leaders should make sure they do regular one-on-one check-ins with staff and conduct regular pulse checks to get a whole of organisation view.

What are pulse checks?

Pulse Checks or Pulse Surveys are an effective way of capturing employee feedback on organisational topics such as – wellbeing, job satisfaction, communication, relationships, leadership, work environment etc. They are short surveys that can be used as an opportunity to measure a concentrated impact of change, or to simply check-in with staff on a regular basis. The output of which can inform subsequent organisational adjustments or identify a need for a larger intervention.

How many questions should my pulse check have?

Pulse checks are designed to be short, and not time consuming to complete. So stick to asking 5-15 questions.

What sort of questions should I ask?

This is dependent on what you are trying to capture. Stick to asking questions that you know you are going to get feedback that you can act on – i.e. feedback that is going to help you adapt or initiate change for improvement/growth.

What is essential to include in a survey?

Your goal when running a survey is to get the most accurate data possible, and get as many staff as you can to complete the survey. There are three things to consider to make this happen.

Share the purpose and context: humans need to know 'why'. Before you provide the survey questions to staff, explain why you want the feedback, the context and what it is going to be used for.

Share the feedback process: let staff know what will happen after they complete the survey

Protect staff anonymity: explain at the beginning of the survey how you are maintaining respondent confidentiality.

What are some clear things to avoid?

Your goal is to provide a safe space for staff to have a voice; therefore, there are a couple nuances to avoid.

• Don't capture information that is not essential
• When sharing the results of the survey, don't share information that can be identified.
• Don't provide the survey in only one format, there might be some that need / prefer to complete the survey in a different way
• Avoid not doing anything after you have got feedback from staff. Staff need to see change/action post providing feedback.
• Do not give staff too many response options, where possible stick to a five point Likert Scale

How often should I do a pulse check?

Pulse checks should be undertaken on a regular basis, ideally, in between your larger culture/engagement surveys. It is important to find the 'sweet spot' between measuring too much and not enough. This is sometimes dependant on the context surrounding your need to measure.

More information

For more information on creating a pulse check survey for your local government contact Shauna McQuade, LGIS HR Risk Management Consultant on 0428 430 394, or shauna.mcquade@lgiswa.com.au.