Frequently Asked Questions

How does the survey work?

The Best Employers’ survey takes place online, and it’s completely confidential. eras, our partners and psychometric experts have designed it to capture your employees’ opinions on engagement, culture and values – everything you need to transform your workplace.

The basic survey has three parts, and it’s completely customisable. Find out more.

Key dates

28 March 2023 – launch conference and survey opens
Friday 28 July 2023 – survey closes
Friday 31 August 2023 – accreditation entry deadline
Thursday 19 October 2023 – awards conference

How much does it cost to enter?

It costs £500 (+VAT) to take part in Best Employers unless you’re a registered charity in which case it’s free. Your entry fee includes access to the survey, a report and action plan showing your results, benchmarking data, the Best Employers’ kitemark, the chance to apply for accreditation and win an award, and a place in the Best Employers’ community.

Best Employers is a not-for-profit programme. So we donate any funds we raise to the East Anglian Air Ambulance a charity that exists to save lives by delivering highly skilled doctors and critical care paramedics by air or car to seriously ill or injured people in the region. They are a life-saving charity that is only kept airborne thanks to our incredible supporters.

How do we get our results?

You’ll be able to access your results in a tailored report on an online portal and you can access these results at any point during or after the roll out of your survey. You can customise and filter responses from different groups of employees (e.g. those in a particular location, function or level). We’ll also give you an action plan with some suggestions of things you might want to work on, and including benchmarking data so you can compare your results to others. Find out more.

How can we get accreditation or award?

If your survey scores are in the top 25 per cent of all organisations, we’ll invite you to apply for an accreditation. There are three tiers – silver, gold and platinum. We’ll ask you to send us extra information that an independent panel of judges will assess alongside your overall survey engagement scores and participation levels. There are three tiers – silver, gold and platinum.

The overall award winners are selected solely on employee feedback from the survey. Awards are presented at the awards conference in the autumn.

This year, everyone who takes part in the programme will also get a Best Employers’ kitemark.

Find out more.

When does the survey start and end?

The survey starts on Tuesday 28 March, which is also when we hold the launch conference. And it closes on Friday 28 July 2023.

Having said that, you can actually start your surveys as soon as eras send you your log-in details for The Psychometric Portal (the platform you use to access the survey), which might be before 28 March.

Is it confidential?

Yes, it’s completely confidential – we don’t collect any information that identifies individual employees.

How many employees do we need to take part?

You’ll need at least 15 employees.

How do we get our people to fill in the survey?

We’ll send you a resource pack with information and ideas on how to get people excited about the survey, for example with posters and other comms.

We have our own employee engagement survey. Can we use some of the existing questions?

Yes – our survey is completely customisable, so you can add, remove or edit the questions.

Do we have to wait until the end of July to get the report that contains our results?

No, you can get your results at any point after all your employees have filled in the survey. You’ll just need to run a PDF report or download the data online (we’ll give you instructions on how to do that once you’ve signed up).

Some of our people don’t have access to computers. Can they still fill in the survey?

We recommend you bring them into your office to do this on a computer. If that’s not possible, you can print out a version for them to answer the questions that way. Someone will need to enter the numbers online though.

We have people outside the eastern region who we’d like to include. Can we do this?

You can – but their answers won’t count towards your final scores for awards and accreditations.

How do we pass on the results of the survey if they’re not as good as we were expecting?

You’ll also have access to a Pure consultant, who can help you give feedback on the results, good and bad, to your employees.

Remember that Best Employers is all about understanding how engaged your people are. So getting results that aren’t what you were expecting can actually be a positive thing. That’s because it’ll help you identify your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, and come up with ways to improve.

We have no chance of winning an award. So why bother?

Best Employers is about so much more than just awards and accreditations. You get the chance to benchmark your organisation against other businesses in the region and identify areas for improvement. The results are just the starting point for creating and improving engagement strategies.

You’ll also get a kitemark for taking part, which shows your people you care about what they think.

Can we change the number of questions to make the survey shorter?

Yes, you can. The default for each section is six questions, but you can take out any you’re not interested in finding out about – you just need to keep one. We recommend you keep between four and six per section though. Otherwise your results might not be that useful.

If we change the length of our survey, can we still compare our results with other companies which haven’t?

Yes, don’t worry – our system will adjust your scores so you still get fair and even benchmarking data.

How long has Best Employers been running?

We founded Best Employers in 2012, with the help of psychometrics experts eras Ltd. We were then joined by our sponsors, Birketts, and our media partner, LOCALiQ (formerly Archant), in 2018. The programme runs every two years.

Learn more about Best Employers' history.