Higher ed staff surveys in short:
Higher education staff surveys help colleges and universities understand what employees are experiencing behind the scenes, from workload and burnout to leadership trust, communication, and retention risks. When designed well, these surveys give campus leaders a clearer path to improving the employee experience, which often has a direct impact on the student experience.
Your staff and faculty are the living, breathing part of your college or university’s brand.
The messaging you share in the market helps set expectations for prospective students, families, donors, and the broader community. But the reality of the student experience is shaped by the people who deliver it every day.
Think about the admissions counselor answering questions from a nervous parent. The advisor helping a student stay on track to graduate. The facilities team making campus feel safe and welcoming. The faculty member adjusting office hours to support a student who is struggling.
Those interactions tell the real story of your institution.
From our experience conducting higher education staff surveys, we often see a clear connection between the employee experience and the student experience. When staff feel supported, valued, and equipped to do their jobs well, students are more likely to feel that same level of care in and out of the classroom.
The opposite is true, too.
If your marketing promises collaboration, flexibility, and individualized support, but staff are burned out, under-resourced, or disconnected from leadership, students will feel the gap.
Even the strongest enrollment strategy can fall short if the day-to-day campus experience does not match what was promised.
A higher education staff survey gives leaders a structured way to understand what is working, what is not, and where action is needed most.
A higher education staff survey is a research study designed to measure the employee experience at a college or university.
It typically includes faculty, administrative staff, student-facing teams, operational staff, and sometimes student employees. Depending on the goals of the study, the survey may be sent institution-wide or focused on a specific department, campus, role type, or employee group.
The goal is not just to ask whether employees are “satisfied.”
A strong staff survey looks at the full picture of working at the institution, including:
Useful resource: Want a deeper look at how to run employee surveys from start to finish? Read our Guide to Conducting Employee Surveys for a full breakdown of survey planning, question design, analysis, and reporting.
Higher education is a unique workplace. Faculty, administrative staff, student affairs teams, advancement teams, operations staff, and leadership all experience the institution differently.
A staff survey helps leadership understand those differences instead of relying on assumptions or feedback from the loudest voices in the room.
Many higher ed employees are deeply committed to their institution’s mission. That commitment is one of higher education’s greatest strengths, but it can also hide burnout.
Staff may continue showing up, helping students, and taking on additional work even when they are stretched thin. Over time, that can lead to frustration, lower morale, and turnover.
In fact, CUPA-HR’s 2025 Higher Education Employee Retention Survey found that one in four higher ed employees are likely or very likely to look for another job in the next year.
The same research found many employees are taking on responsibilities outside their original job descriptions or absorbing work from staff who have left.
This is why a survey should measure more than general satisfaction. It should explore workload, work-life balance, staffing levels, role clarity, and whether employees have the resources they need to do their jobs well.
Through our work with higher education employee surveys, we know compensation is a major factor in retention, but it is rarely the only one.
Staff may also leave because they do not feel valued, they do not trust leadership, they see limited growth opportunities, or they feel their department is constantly operating in crisis mode.
A well-designed staff survey helps separate the symptoms from the drivers.
For example, employees might say pay is a concern. But when the data is analyzed by role, tenure, department, and engagement level, leadership may find that turnover risk is highest among employees who also feel disconnected from decision-making or unclear about advancement opportunities.
That distinction matters. If leaders only focus on pay, they may miss other issues they can address more quickly.
Most colleges and universities have a clear vision for the student experience. The challenge is understanding whether that vision is actually being supported by internal operations.
For example, an institution may promote itself as highly responsive and student-centered. But if advisors are managing overwhelming caseloads, financial aid staff are working with outdated technology, or faculty feel disconnected from administrative decisions, the student experience may not match the promise.
A staff survey helps uncover those disconnects before they show up in student complaints, retention issues, or employee turnover.
To get the most value out of your research, you need to ask the right questions. We typically recommend focusing on four key pillars.
This section measures how employees feel about their work, their role, and their connection to the institution.
It should go beyond a basic question like, “How satisfied are you with your job?” Instead, ask about whether staff feel valued, whether their work is meaningful, whether they have the tools to succeed, and whether they would recommend the institution as a good place to work.
Example questions include:
Many institutions are operating with leaner teams, shifting responsibilities, and increased pressure to support students with fewer resources. A staff survey can help leaders understand whether workload issues are isolated to certain teams or happening across campus.
Example questions include:
Leadership communication is a common friction point in higher education staff surveys.
Employees may understand their own department’s goals but feel disconnected from broader institutional decisions. Others may feel communication is top-down, inconsistent, or unclear.
Example questions include:
Culture can feel hard to measure, but staff surveys make it more tangible.
This section can explore whether employees feel respected, included, connected to colleagues, and aligned with the institution’s mission.
Example questions include:
How you collect data is just as important as what you ask. Here are a few things to consider when conducting staff surveys.
A comprehensive staff survey is best when you need a full baseline read on the employee experience. These surveys are often conducted every 12 to 18 months and include a broader set of topics.
Employee pulse surveys are shorter check-ins used between larger studies. They are helpful after a major policy change, leadership transition, restructuring, or campus-wide initiative.
For example, a university might conduct a full employee engagement survey in the spring, then use a short pulse survey six months later to measure whether communication and workload perceptions have improved.
Confidentiality should not be treated as a small note at the bottom of the survey invitation. It should be part of the research design from the beginning.
This includes deciding which demographic questions to ask, setting minimum reporting thresholds, avoiding overly specific cuts of the data, and being careful with open-ended comments.
In our experience, the most useful surveys combine rating-based questions with open-ended feedback. The ratings help quantify patterns across departments or employee groups. The open-ended responses explain why those patterns exist.
For example, a survey might show that staff rate workload poorly across campus. The open-ended comments may reveal that the issue is not simply “too much work.”
It may be tied to vacancies, unclear priorities, outdated systems, or responsibilities shifting without additional support.
That is the type of detail leaders need before deciding what to fix.
Many colleges and universities have strong HR and institutional research teams. Still, employee surveys can be sensitive.
Using a third-party employee survey research firm can help create separation between the institution and the data collection process. It also gives staff more confidence that their individual responses will not be reviewed internally.
A full-service research partner can also help with survey design, programming, launch communications, reminders, data cleaning, analysis, reporting, and recommendations.
This is an important difference from DIY survey tools. A DIY platform can collect responses. A full-service research company helps make sure the right questions are asked, the data is trustworthy, and the findings are translated into clear next steps.
Useful resource: We dive into the benefits, process, and costs in our blog: Using a Third Party for Employee Surveys.
To get the most actionable data, we recommend using a mix of performance-based ratings and open-ended feedback. Here are five common questions that provide a solid foundation for understanding the current pulse of your campus culture.
Pro Tip: One thing we recommend avoiding is asking too many open-ended questions. Open-ended feedback is valuable, but if every section includes a comment box, the survey can start to feel overwhelming.
Most colleges and universities benefit from running a comprehensive staff survey every 12 to 18 months.
That timing gives leadership enough space to review the results, share findings, create action plans, and begin making changes before measuring again.
Smaller pulse surveys can be conducted quarterly or semi-annually, depending on what the institution is trying to track.
⚠️ The biggest mistake is surveying staff without follow-up.
If employees take the time to provide honest feedback, they expect to hear what was learned and what will happen next. Even if leadership cannot fix everything immediately, communicating the findings and next steps helps build trust for future surveys.
Drive Research is a full-service market research company that conducts higher education staff surveys for colleges and universities. Our team helps with survey design, programming, fieldwork, analysis, reporting, and recommendations so your institution can move from feedback to action with confidence.
