Employee Insights
Stanford University Human Resources (UHR) is committed to understanding what employees value most about Stanford to inform planning and priorities for employee programs.
We can gather insights in many ways: assessing help ticket inquiries, conducting broad and targeted surveys, polling, and hosting focus groups. When you offer your feedback, it helps employee program managers gauge the effectiveness of offerings and identify future improvements or new services.
You can always share your feedback directly by emailing hrcommunications@stanford.edu.
Current and recently completed listening efforts
In addition to the school or individual programs across Stanford that may ask for your feedback, here are some recent activities where UHR has partnered with other schools or units to capture your perspective.
Cardinal Pulse Pilot Survey Program (2024)
As an employee of Stanford, your voice critical feedback to help university leaders support the satisfaction, well-being, and engagement of our Stanford community. To support staff surveying within schools and units, we have launched the Cardinal Pulse project.
This pilot program is designed to develop standardized conventions for staff surveys across schools and units. We have implemented a specialized, user-friendly platform from our vendor partner, WorkTango, to safeguards confidentiality and makes survey administration, results reporting, and action planning more efficient and effective.
What to expect
If your school or unit is part of the pilot project, you’ll hear about Cardinal Pulse directly from your local leadership or HR team. To learn more about the survey platform and confidentiality standards, visit the Cardinal Pulse webpage.
WorkLife Parent Perception Survey (Spring - Summer 2024)
Following up on its July 2022 survey, the WorkLife Office will gather feedback from families who are currently enrolled in Stanford's on-campus child care center. The survey results will lead to reflective conversations and help our child care programs set goals and agreements on how to best meet the needs of children and their families.
What to expect
If your child is currently enrolled in one of Stanford’s on-campus child care centers, look out for an email from the WorkLife Office in late April inviting you to participate.
Cardinal at Work website navigation user experience (Spring 2023 - Spring 2024)
University HR partnered with user experience experts in Stanford Web Services to study key improvements so that you can easily find the information you need on the website.
Employee Value Proposition (EVP) research (Summer 2023 - Winter 2024)
In the fall of 2023, University HR conducted leadership interviews and focus group sessions with more than 70 staff and 19 external candidates to hear perceptions of Stanford as an employer and which aspects of employee experience are valued most. This was an update to research originally conducted in 2020 through interviews and a survey of over 1,900 staff.
The resulting framework informs recruitment messaging, the design of our Careers website, and employee-facing communications
Benefits Open Enrollment and wellness experience (annually in November)
Following the annual Open Enrollment period each fall, Stanford Benefits and BeWell invite you to share feedback navigating the benefits election process, as well as your insights on wellness and employee program offerings. The findings are used to inform communications and future health and wellness programming.
Learning Needs Assessment Manager Survey (Fall 2023)
In Sept. 2023, University HR launched a survey for all people managers to assess the learning and development needs of managers and their teams in order to contribute to Stanford’s mission. Survey results were shared with managers in Feb. 2024. More than 200 managers provided valuable feedback about which competencies contribute to manager and team success, as well as how they prefer to learn. The results are summarized on Cardinal at Work.
What to expect
UHR leaders are using these survey results to inform strategic planning for learning and development courses and programs for managers and their teams.
Flexible Work Survey (Oct - Dec. 2022)
In fall 2022, all schools and most units collaborated on a survey to assess your experience with flexible work policies and practices. The insights were used to enhance work practices as we look toward the future of work, particularly how to plan for collaborative on-site work, run efficient meetings, build connections with colleagues, and create an effective and comfortable workspace.
Learn more about the Flexible Work survey on the Cardinal at Work website.
