FAQs

Best Companies are the workplace engagement specialists. We help organisations become better places to work by measuring, improving and recognising engagement.

Our accreditation programme is the standard of workplace engagement in the UK, recognising organisations and managers who genuinely value and respect their employees.

Our b-Heard survey powers the Best Companies to Work For lists published each year by The Sunday Times.

We’ve built a massive engagement data-set featuring some of the UK’s best-known and most successful employers, allowing our clients to see how they compare against their peers and competitors.

Our survey helps organisations understand how their employees think and feel about their work. Our tools reveal engagement challenges and highlight opportunities for improvement. Our accreditation programme and lists spotlight the best organisations to work for, helping them retain and attract top talent.

It starts with our confidential b-Heard engagement survey. Employees are invited to say how they feel about various aspects of their working lives by scoring a series of 70 statements (sometimes referred to as questions) on a scale of ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’.

We present the results of your survey using our Workplace Insight and MC³ platforms to help you explore and understand engagement in your organisation.

If your survey results score high enough, you’ll earn a Best Companies accreditation and a place on the Best Companies to Work For list.

It’s our recommended survey distribution method. You give us a unique email address for each of your employees and we send out unique links and login details to our online b-Heard survey.

You give us the names and addresses of each employee you want to survey. We then send out a sealed payslip-style envelope containing a unique login code for our online b-Heard survey.

It’s a printed version of our b-Heard survey, dispatched with a cover letter and pre-paid return envelope for your employees to fill out and send back. Paper surveys include a login code for your employees who prefer to take the survey online.

1. Our measurement and analysis methodologies are academically rigorous.
2. Our exclusive tools, developed over time, are proven to work.
3. We offer comprehensive benchmarking from up-to-date, sector-specific engagement data and best practice.
4. Our name is widely recognised as the standard of engagement.
5. We enable real behavioural change through end-to-end engagement journeys.

The b-Heard survey contains 70 questions about things like leadership, wellbeing, pay and more. The questions focus on our 8 factors of workplace engagement.

Yes, we take great care to make sure employees aren’t matched to their survey responses.

Responses are grouped and subjected to strict rules to ensure strict confidentiality. The demographic data we collect is only used to identify patterns of engagement in your organisation.

Individual responses are only revealed for the survey’s two free-text questions. These questions ask employees to describe why they think yours is a good organisation to work for and what would make it better. The free-text questions are only accompanied by information about the respondent’s employment group e.g. sales, marketing, accounts etc.

Roughly 15-20 minutes.

No, employees can save their online survey progress and complete it later.

Survey invitations should never be shared. The survey code in each invitation is unique and has been carefully assigned according to your organisation’s structure. Survey codes can only be used once. Please contact us if you have not received your survey invitation.

Please contact us and we will resend the invitation.

The front page asks for demographic information such as: the department the employee works in, their age range, sex, and length of service. This may not be necessary if you choose to pre-populate your demographic data.

Pages two and three contain 70 statements about your organisation. Your employees are asked to say how much they agree with each statement using a seven-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree.

Finally, employees are asked ‘What makes this a great workplace?’ and ‘What would make this a better workplace?’ They are free to write whatever comments they like.

The survey is only useful when employees feel confident to speak honestly and without fear of reprisal.

Though there may be ways we technically could match individual surveys to an employee, it would be completely counterproductive for us to do so.

It’s critical to us that employee confidentiality is maintained and we take great care to ensure it is.

Survey barcodes and numbers help us identify where a survey has been returned from. It also contains demographic information about the respondent.

We maintain a link between a survey number and an individual. We will never share this link with an organisation.

Please ask them to contact us on 01978 856100, or email [email protected]

Survey champions promote the survey in your organisation, answer questions and help their colleagues feel comfortable with the process.

No. If an employee is visually impaired, please advise them to call us on 01978 856100 and we will be happy to complete the survey with them over the phone.

Surveys typically close two weeks after launching. Please speak to us if you want to extend your survey.