Thank you to all our users who responded to the survey which closes today. All your views are valued and will help us to evaluate our service and plan for the future. Here’s a summary of your feedback. Oh, and I can also announce the winner of the £100 John Lewis voucher.

During June we gathered the views of readers and also conducted a separate survey with our contributors. I’d like to share the findings with you and I’d be pleased to hear from you with any further comments on the survey. The Efficiency Exchange team will be looking closely at these findings and we’ll be exploring how best to respond to your preferences and views.

Readers survey findings June 2017

What would you like to see on Efficiency Exchange?

There is notable interest in case studies, practical advice and evidence of what works, judging by the views of 88% of respondents. It was also interesting to see the interest expressed in ‘innovation and ideas’, suggesting an appetite for newer ways of doing things. We can see a link between the interest in ‘professional development’ and ‘events and networking’ and this is something we could explore with partner professional groups. We are glad to see interest in interviews and thought leadership which can help to balance the ‘how?’ with the ‘why?’ of good practice. Here are the results:

• Case studies – 88%
• Evidence of what works – 88%
• Practical advice – 88%
• Innovation and ideas – 68%
• Professional development – 44%
• Interviews – 40%
• Events and networking – 32%
• Thought leadership 32%
• Making contacts – 4%
• Evidence based practice – 4%

Which topics interest you?

We chunked readers’ multiple responses into the headings below. There seems to be a lot of interest in content on process improvement, change and transformation, as you can see:

• Process improvement – 6
• Change and transformation – 4
• Procurement – 3
• Case studies – 2
• Digital and technology – 2
• Students as partners – 1
• Graduate destinations – 1
• Apprenticeships – 1
• Teaching and learning – 1
• Social mobility – 1
• Education – 1
• Politics – 1
• Advice – 1
• Asking queries via the network – 1

Having read the Efficiency Exchange, I will:

• Use it more regularly – 68%
• Recommend it to colleagues – 60%
• Use it to promote my next project – 32%
• Continue reading it – 4%
• Forward articles – 4%

Do you consider Efficiency Exchange to be the sector’s most effective network for discovering and sharing good professional practice and evidence of efficiency and value for money?

We were keen to know users’ perceptions on this objective. While more than 50% of respondents agree with the proposition, the ‘don’t knows’ of 44% suggest that we have a bit more work to do before we can confidently make this claim.

• Strongly agree – 20%
• Moderately agree – 32%
• Don’t know – 44%
• Moderately disagree – 4%
• Strongly disagree – 0%

Contributor survey

We also conducted a survey by email of our contributors, in which we wanted to find out more about their experiences of writing for the Efficiency Exchange and how this might have affected them professionally. Here are the findings.

Writing for Efficiency Exchange has raised the profile of my work:

• Within my professional network – 87.5%
• With new contacts – 37.5%
• Within my institution – 25%    

Having published on Efficiency Exchange, I will:

• Recommend it to colleagues – 100%
• Use it more regularly – 75%
• Use it to promote my next project – 75%

Having contributed to Efficiency Exchange, please tell us about your experience.

Without humblebragging, we did get some appreciative feedback:

• Seamless – a joy!
• The guys were really helpful and positive, Rosie and Ian are awesome.
• It was a succinct means of disseminating our research and having the logo provided an extra form of endorsement too.
• It’s great to be part of a very diverse group of contributors both in terms of style and topic. The retweeting of blogs by EE is also much appreciated.
• The whole process of contributing to Efficiency Exchange was easy.
• Very easy to do. Was able to discuss a few ideas to pick the one most suitable for your readers.
• Extremely positive, particularly the most recent contribution where the editing of my content for blog purposes by Efficiency Exchange colleagues was very useful and has helped with blog writing style in general.
• Pleasure. Makes me think I should write some more for you… 🙂

Do you consider Efficiency Exchange to be the sector’s most effective network for discovering and sharing good professional practice and evidence of efficiency and value for money?

Contributors were more positive in their support for this proposition than readers, with 75% of respondents saying they agreed.

• Strongly agree – 25%
• Moderately agree – 50%
• Don’t know – 25%

And the winner of the £100 John Lewis voucher is…

Rebecca Barnes who works at the University of Sheffield in the role of mental health projects officer within the Student Support and Wellbeing department. The Efficiency Exchange team congratulates Rebecca on her win.

Rebecca says: “Thank you so much for the opportunity to win this voucher! Although I work within the professional services, I regularly like to read opinions and case studies from all areas of the higher education sector. You never know what might inspire your work and it is fantastic that the Efficiency Exchange are working to keep improving the site.”

If you have any more comments on how the Efficiency Exchange could provide a better service, I would be pleased to hear from you on ian.powling@universitiesuk.ac.uk