Why Taking Your Survey's Online Makes Sense

• Paper consumption has increased six-fold over the past 50 years.
• 75-85% of business documents are in paper form.
• 90% of a business' information is in documents, not databases.
• One tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets.
• The average office worker uses over 10,000 sheets of printing and copying paper per year.

Our innovative team sat down last year and gave themselves the challenge of reducing our impact on the environment by reducing internal paper use and also that of our clients.

The team quickly identified our client's use of QPS satisfaction surveys as an area where large amounts of paper must be used by clients in order to collect and report data to us.

Online survey delivery quickly became the obvious solution that would provide clients with an alternative option for implementing the survey process. Once the team began researching different software options it also became evident that saving paper was not the only thing we could do better.

In September 2011, with the design and implementation phases completed, United Protestants Association NSW agreed to trial the new survey process. Initially 2 UPA sites completed the trial - UPA Sydney North CACP (Community Care) and UPA Redleaf Serviced Apartments (Residential Care).

A timeframe was agreed upon and each employee was provided with a web-link enabling them to log in and complete the survey whilst they were on shift. The link could be accessed within their facility or even from home if necessary as the entire process was web-based.

Feedback from the trial process confirmed to the QPS team that conducting surveys online as opposed to paper based provided clients with a number of benefits:

"I am happy with the analysis included, there is a lot more additional information that we never got in the other reports. Like information around things like their gender, age group - number of staff in different areas of work and length of employment. This information is always helpful and useful. I like the presentation and the graph format - the percentages around each of the scoring ratings i.e. strongly agree, agree, disagree etc is handy. We can quickly see the percent split up - the number of people rating each different option. This helps us work out why the overall percentage is the way it is, and where we need to improve - Stuart Leverton, Sydney North District Manager for UPA.

Julie O'Reilly - Care Manager for UPA Redleaf Serviced Apartments set up a computer for her staff to complete the survey during their normal shift. When asked if her staff found the on-line survey easy to complete Julie responded "Yes - definitely - it was universal, all of our staff said "oh it's so much better".

The findings from the trial were that the QPS Benchmarking online surveys:

• Require minimal/no paper use at all.
• Provide a much quicker turnaround time from survey launch to report production.
• Allow QPS Benchmarking to provide clients with enhanced reporting information.
• Provide superior confidentiality and security over paper based surveys.
• Cannot be lost and allow staff to comfortably complete surveys in their own time.
• Increased the rate of staff participation.
• Provide cost efficiencies that can be passed on to clients.

After completion of the trial, other QPS Benchmarking clients have begun to realise the benefits of conducting their surveys online.

In March of this year Royal Freemasons decided to process their Employee Satisfaction Surveys on-line for all of their 9 sites including Community and Residential Aged Care in Victoria. Read the feedback provided by Elaine Krassas, Royal Freemasons in an interview on our blog @ http://blog.qpsbenchmarking.com.

Surveys currently available online are:

Aged Care

• Resident Satisfaction
• Relative Satisfaction
• Employee Satisfaction

Community Care

• Care Recipient Satisfaction
• Family/Representative Satisfaction
• Carer Satisfaction
• Employee Satisfaction

Day Surgeries

• Patient Satisfaction
• Clinician Satisfaction
• Employee Satisfaction