Climate Survey Instrument and Services

The Vendor is required to provide needs to replace its current climate survey instrument, which is outdated and no longer meets the institution's needs.
- The current instrument places a heavy administrative burden on the Decision Support team, which lacks critical assessment areas such as information about employee agency and influence.
- Additionally, as a virtual, non-traditional campus, we require a survey instrument specifically designed to address the unique experiences of faculty and staff working in virtual spaces, rather than traditional brick-and-mortar environments.
- University seeks to implement a comprehensive climate survey solution that meets the unique needs of a virtual campus environment. Key activities include:
•    Conducting a vendor selection process for an external climate survey provider.
•    Implementing a customizable survey instrument designed for virtual workspaces.
•    Establishing robust data collection and disaggregation protocols to capture diverse experiences.
•    Creating comprehensive reporting mechanisms that deliver actionable insights.
•    Developing an implementation timeline for spring 2027 survey administration.
•    Ensuring the survey addresses virtual workspace experiences and enables benchmarking against peer institutions.
- To maintain quality and relevance, the following approaches must be avoided:
•    Implementing a one-size-fits-all instrument designed solely for traditional campuses.
•    Selecting solutions that cannot effectively disaggregate data or provide comprehensive reporting.
•    Involving internal Decision Support staff in extensive manual data processing or survey administration.
•    Choosing rigid, non-customizable tools or solutions that compromise anonymity and confidentiality.
•    Selecting platforms requiring significant IT infrastructure or support.
•    Overlooking the unique needs of virtual work environments.
- Methods and Tools
•    Online survey platform accessible across devices.
•    Secure data collection and storage systems located within the continental country.
•    Dashboard or visualization tools for presenting results.
•    Benchmarking capabilities against similar institutions.
•    Customization to adapt questions as institutional needs evolve.
- Survey instrument shall be fully customizable, allowing University to add, remove, or modify questions to align with institutional priorities.
- Platform must address experiences in virtual work environments, including remote collaboration, virtual communication, and distributed team dynamics.
- System must provide robust data disaggregation by department, role, length of employment, and other demographic factors defined by the University.
- Must deliver comprehensive reports including descriptive statistics, trend analysis, and comparative benchmarking.
- Platform must include interactive dashboards for authorized users to explore data by multiple variables.
- Survey must support anonymous response collection with safeguards to protect confidentiality and clear communication to participants.
- Must provide a fully outsourced solution for survey administration and data processing, delivering only final reports and raw data files to the University.
- Platform must provide unified access for all employees (faculty, staff, and management confidential employees) through a single survey tool.
- System must support longitudinal analysis to track climate changes over multiple administrations.
- Platform must comply with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.
- Must provide benchmarking capabilities for comparison with peer institutions, including public vs. private and online vs. brick-and-mortar campuses.
- System must have mobile compatibility for smartphones and tablets.

- Questions/Inquires Deadline: December 30, 2025