This article explains what surveys and declarations are and how to set them up.
What is a compliance survey?
A compliance survey is an essential tool used by organizations to ensure that employees and stakeholders are following established laws, regulations, policies, and ethical standards. Surveys involve employees commenting about the world around them - the way they see it (they can have some personal questions too).
They have no case management - the company wouldn't analyse an individual response, in fact, they might keep the responses anonymous. Generally, the company would ask all employees to fill them out together and aggregate the results to produce a RAG or score rating. You can use graphical interactive reports to analyse this data.
Common examples are Integrity, Diversity, and Employee satisfaction.
What is a compliance declaration?
Declarations involve employees disclosing/declaring things about themselves. They usually come with case management to deal with those disclosures/declarations or flag them up for management.
They are assigned as and when an employee needs to fill them out, and declarations filled by different individuals are not aggregated.
Common examples are Display Screen Equipment, Conflicts of Interest Questionnaire, and Fit and Proper Questionnaire.
Editing surveys and declarations
All Skillcast declarations are aligned with the FCA's requirements. If you wish to make changes to any of the declarations, please contact your Customer Success Manager. However, please note that it is your responsibility to ensure that the Declaration remains compliant with FCA requirements if changes are made.
Furthermore, all required changes must be made prior to the launch, so please ensure all reviewers have signed off before the survey or declaration is assigned to employees. Once it is live, it is not possible to edit, add or remove questions or change the setup as this will affect the user experience, bookmarking and reporting.
Questions settings
There are three types of elements that can be used in both surveys and declarations.
Multiple choice question (MCQ)
Text input question
File upload question
All three types of questions have two common settings:
Required
By default, all questions are set to required. If you need a conditional question that is added only when a particular option is selected in a previous question, set it to optional.
All questions must appear one at a time to ensure none are skipped, so if you need optional questions, understand under what conditions you need employees to answer them so they can be meaningfully inserted in the sequence.
Maintain response across submissions
If enabled, when the employee takes the previously completed declaration again, they will see their last response.
Multiple choice question
Input type
You can display options as buttons or in a dropdown selection.
Option
A selectable option. Each option can be set up with one or multiple add-ons that appear or are set after the option is selected:
Confirmation question
The confirmation question can be used to confirm the employee selected the right option or suggest trying to do something to resolve the issue before they submit their answer.
For example, in the DSE declaration, you ask if employees can tilt their keyboard, and the employee selects option no. Before saving this answer and moving on to the next, we can show a confirmation question, suggesting how to tilt the keyboard and asking if they can do it now. The employee can then select a yes or no option again.
Detail question
It is a question with a text input box for adding additional information. Similar to the text input question element (for more details, see the "Text input question and File upload question" section below). Detail question information will appear in the report as an additional information to this question.
File upload question
It is a question with a file upload button. Similar to the file upload question element (for more details, see the "Text input question and File upload question" section below). The uploaded document will be available for a review within the report.
Alert
This setting can be used to highlight the selected option that requires approver's attention. When the employee submits their responses, you can choose to include this text in the email sent to the submitter and to an optional cc or bcc recipient. It is also displayed as an "open alert" in the administrator's report.
NOTE: the report is visible to the administrator only. Your Customer Success Manager will set up and train you on how to use this report.
Resolution
If an option requires an alert, it can be resolved automatically when the end user submits the declaration. You can choose to include this text in the email sent to the submitter. It will also display as a "closed alert" in the administrator's report.
RAG rating
To colour code the administrator's report, assign a colour to different options. The available colours are red, amber, green, and blue. By default, there is no colour set. It is primarily used for surveys but can be used for declarations too.
Score
You can assign a number from 1 to 100 to different options. You can use this setting for rating questions with or without the RAG rating. By default, there is no score set. It is primarily used for surveys but can be used for declarations too.
Text input question and File upload question
Use these elements instead of detail question and file upload question in the multiple choice question element when you need them as mandatory questions.
They can also be used as optional questions when you need to add a sequence of optional text input or file upload questions after a specific option is selected in the multiple-choice question.
Submission settings
There are several scenarios of what happens when an employee submits a survey or declaration. This section describes the available options.
Submission type
Surveys can be taken only once, whereas declarations can capture multiple historic submissions. If an employee has submitted the declaration previously and later submits it again, there are four options available for how the submissions will be treated:
Archive previous submissions
The previous submission is archived, and only the new submission is available to view in the reports. The archived data is still available as an ad-hoc request for a specific individual's training record.
Overwrite previous submissions
The previous submission is deleted and no longer available, and only the new submission is available to view in the reports.
Retain multiple submissions
All previous and current submissions are available in the reports. This is the default option.
Anonymous submission
All submissions are anonymous and aggregated in an anonymous survey report. This option cannot be used for declarations. Anonymous data is impossible to track back to a person.
Automated email settings
When an employee submits a survey or declaration, you can choose to send a summary email. Below are the available settings. If you would like to use this option, we will need you to provide us with the details so we can set it up as required.
Sender
This is the sender's email address. By default it is [email protected]. You can change it to your company's email address providing that Skillcast's email IP addresses are whitelisted. We advise using a "no reply" email address because the summary of the survey or declaration email is for information purposes only.
CC email
You have the option to CC one other email address. This helps you to ensure all relevant people, such as your compliance department, HR team or facilities team are in the loop.
There are three available options:
Do not CC email
Only CC if there are open alerts
CC if there are open or closed alerts
By default, it is set to not use CC email. If you choose to CC another email address, we recommend selecting option 2. This option will only notify the administrator if a submission has an open alert, for which they would need to check the administrator's report.
CC email type
There are two options available:
CC (The end user can see the email has been sent to the CC email address)
BCC (The end user cannot see the email has been sent to the CC email address)
CC email address
This is the email address that will be copied in.
Subject
This text will appear in the subject line of the email.
Introduction
This text will appear at the start of the email.
Closed alerts
This text will appear before a list of alerts that were automatically resolved if there are any.
Open alerts
This text will appear before the open alerts if there are any.
Conclusion
This text will appear at the end of the email.