Survey targets staff retention at English Heritage
With the support of Chief Executive Simon Thurley and as part of the process of developing their first comprehensive Reward, Recognition and Retention strategy, English Heritage - the champions of England’s historic environment - carried out its first full-scale employee survey to understand better the issues that influence the retention and motivation of its staff.

TalentDrain worked with English Heritage’s HR team to run focus groups for 1,200 staff before developing the survey, which was made available for all employees to complete anonymously.

“We asked people exactly what is important to them in their work and how satisfied they are with these aspects,” said Sarah Aston, HR Director at English Heritage.

TalentDrain analysed the responses and groups of people from across English Heritage, in consultation with colleagues, worked with HR to develop an action plan to address staff feedback.

“The survey highlighted that our staff have a huge amount of passion and job satisfaction,” said Sarah Aston. “The action plan proposes changes to our communications processes, introducing more face-to-face communication, changes to our pay structure, to make it more transparent, and focusing more on all aspects of performance management. We want to use the local expertise of our staff and recognise their unique professional contributions.”

English Heritage plans to run a full survey every two years, with regular shorter surveys across a smaller sample in alternate years, to provide ongoing benchmarking data.

“We’ve got far more out of this process than I could ever have imagined,” said Sarah Aston. “The quality and level of information has given us a real wealth of highly credible material. It has helped us begin to address what can be very intangible and emotional issues.”