Our DCU Employee Engagement Survey 2025

The Our DCU Employee Engagement Survey is a university-wide staff survey designed to gather insights into the experiences of employees at DCU. The feedback collected will help shape actions that enhance our work environment, ensuring that DCU remains an attractive, supportive, and rewarding place to work. The survey results will be shared at both the institutional level and, where responses meet a minimum threshold, at the faculty, school, department, and unit level. This ensures that meaningful action can be taken across all areas of the University.

Understanding the experiences of our employees is essential to making DCU the best possible place to work. This survey provides a structured way to gather feedback, allowing us to identify areas where improvements are needed while also recognising and reinforcing what is working well. The insights from the survey will inform key institutional initiatives, including the Athena Swan Silver Action Plan and the Race Equality Action Plan, while also supporting schools in evaluating and refining their local Athena Swan action plans.

By conducting a regular cycle of staff surveys, we are building a comprehensive dataset that allows us to track progress over time and assess the impact of initiatives aimed at enhancing employee engagement, wellbeing, and professional development. Your input plays a crucial role in shaping the future of DCU as a workplace where all employees can grow and thrive.

All DCU employees, including academic, professional, technical, and support staff, are invited to participate in the Employee Engagement Survey. This includes colleagues who work for one of our campus companies.

Participation is completely voluntary. There is no obligation to participate, and should you choose to do so you can refuse to answer specific questions, or decide to withdraw from the survey. All information you provide will be confidential and your anonymity will be protected throughout. You maintain the right to withdraw from the survey at any stage up to the point of data submission. A participant will not be able to withdraw their data after submission as their contribution will be anonymous and the data gatherers will not be able to locate an individual contribution. 

Yes, we encourage you to participate. We want to hear from all those who contribute to the University community, whether you work directly for DCU or a subsidiary company. While some questions may feel less relevant to your role, your feedback on other areas will be invaluable in shaping improvements across the University. If a question doesn’t apply to you, you can simply select ‘Don’t know’ or ‘Not applicable’ or skip it. 

Yes, the survey is confidential. Responses will be aggregated, and no individual will be identifiable in the results. The survey results will be shared at both the institutional level and at the faculty, school, department, and unit level. To protect anonymity, however, results will only be shared for groups with at least ten responses.

No, your responses are completely confidential, and no raw data will be shared with your faculty or department. However, we advise against including any details in your comments that could identify you or others.

Survey results, including free-text comments, will be available through an online reporting dashboard, allowing data to be broken down by faculty, school or department, and analysed by a range of demographics such as job role, age and gender. This ensures that action planning is targeted where it is needed most. To protect anonymity, demographic breakdowns will only be shown when there are at least ten responses in a category.

The survey will collect anonymous data on gender, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, civil status, family status, religion and Disability. It will also ask questions about the respondents' employment at DCU. Participants are not asked for their name, email address or any other contact information or personal data. 

We ask staff to provide key demographic information, including ethnicity, Disability, religion, or sexual orientation, as these factors can shape workplace experiences. This data helps us identify patterns, ensure fair and inclusive policies, and drive meaningful change.

We understand these are personal questions, and confidentiality is a priority. While every question in the survey is optional, providing this information allows us to:

• Gain a clearer understanding of the experiences of all staff at DCU.
• Identify and address any inequalities linked to race, gender, or other characteristics.
• Support our commitments under equality legislation.
• Inform and enhance our work on key equality initiatives, including Athena Swan and the Race Equality Action Plan.
• Help shape policies and actions that foster a truly inclusive and equitable workplace.

The legal basis for the processing of this data is based on consent. The data collected will be used strictly for Our DCU purposes and raw data will not be shared with any third parties. We will only share aggregated, anonymised statistics, and where required, data disaggregated by gender or other protected characteristics. Individuals will not be identifiable in any reports or analyses shared.

Data will be retained only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined above. Data will be stored on a secure server with limited access by the Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Culture team only. Anonymised data may be used in future Our DCU Employee Engagement Surveys for benchmarking purposes. 

No, all questions are optional. If you are unsure about a question or it doesn’t apply to you, you can select ‘Don’t know’ or ‘Not applicable’, or simply skip it. If your opinion varies depending on the situation, or you feel neutral about a statement, you may choose ‘Neither agree nor disagree’.

To ensure the most accurate insights, we ask that you only answer questions relevant to your experience.

Only fully completed surveys will be included in the final analysis. If you start the survey but choose to withdraw before submitting, your responses will not be saved or used.

The survey is shorter than it has been in previous years and is mostly multiple choice opinion questions, where you read a statement and select how much you agree or disagree with it.  It should take around 10 minutes to complete.

No, participation is entirely voluntary. However, we strongly encourage all staff to take part, as your feedback is essential in shaping improvements across DCU.

Once the survey results have been analysed, we will share key insights with staff through our usual communication channels and on the DCU People website. The University’s Senior Management Group will review the findings and identify areas for improvement.

More detailed results will be shared with relevant faculties, schools, and departments to facilitate targeted discussions. These insights will directly inform action planning at both University-wide and local levels, with progress updates provided regularly. The impact of these actions will also be measured in future survey cycles to track improvements over time.

If you have any further questions, please contact Rachel Power at rachel.power@dcu.ie.