Platform FAQs

The Kaleidoscope Staff Surveys are designed for the whole organisation. We call them ‘Staff Surveys’, rather than ‘Teacher Surveys’, because every voice matters—including those of employed staff and volunteers.

We encourage participation across your workforce: teaching and leadership teams, school business leaders, administration, site staff, break-time supervisors, SEND support and parent-volunteers.

Involving everyone helps your Kaleidoscope Platform results - your Kaleidoscopic Data - reflect the views of the whole workforce.

Inviting only selected groups may skew the results and leave important perspectives unheard.

Consider how and when you will support each team to participate, including those who may have limited access to email or time away from their day-to-day responsibilities.

You may also include contractors and others who contribute to your organisation. To access the Staff Survey, each participant must use an email address with a domain registered during set-up. The domain is the part of the email address after the ‘@’; see the EMAIL DOMAINS section below for further guidance.

Participants do not need to answer questions that are outside their role or experience. They can select ‘N/A’ where available or use the opt-out provided for questions that do not apply—for example, questions about curriculum design for site staff, or working with students and families for those without these responsibilities.

Understanding whether people feel included, valued and able to bring their whole selves to work is central to improving diversity, equity and inclusion across your organisation. Hearing from everyone gives you a stronger foundation for meaningful action.

If you would like support with encouraging participation, join one of our network meetings or get in touch via platform@kaleidoscope-research.org for guidance.

Yes! Remember you had the option of setting this up at the start. If you have chosen this, consider how and why you share this information. How will it help your staff, your current retention and future recruitments? And, like with everything else, if you want help with this just get in touch!

All of them!

You only pay for the setting, not the staff members. You will be allocated the number of Staff Surveys that you stated when you joined the Kaleidoscope Platform.

To be clear, once all the surveys have been used (i.e. all the Staff Surveys have been taken), nobody else will be able to complete a Staff Survey. In this instance, please reach out to platform@kaleidoscope-research.org to let us know, and we can look into increasing your numbers.

If you have entered too few staff, please contact us and we can change it for you.

Once you have completed your inclusion Audit, you will see a blue box on your dashboard. Inclusion Champions for individuals schools will have this. For Trust Inclusion Champions this will be on their dashboard, and this can be shared via one link - either with your school Champions or across ‘All Staff’.

Click the LAUNCH STAFF SURVEY button to enable a link to send to your staff.

You will see the LINK on the next, yellow, box which appears.

For security reasons we do not contact your staff for you.

Simply copy the link and send it to your staff in an email.

We have written a draft email that you might like to use which you can find in the DRAFT EMAIL TO SEND TO STAFF section below.

When you have closed your Inclusion Audits for all of your settings, you can share the Staff Surveys.

You can do this by email - below - using your personalised and individual ‘magic link’. Staff will then be able to access your Kaleidoscope account. They just need to select the main setting that they work with from the list offered.

They then can complete the Staff Surveys.

For security reasons we do not contact your staff for you.

You’ll need to copy the link from the yellow box on your dashboard and send it to your staff in an email.

We have drafted an example email that you can copy and paste if you wish. All you need to do is to fill in the information specific to your organisation which is shown in angle brackets <like these>.

Dear <Colleague name>,

<This setting> has decided to sign up to the Kaleidoscope Platform, the multi-award winning and world’s first DEI platform for education!

What does that mean?

The Kaleidoscope Platform provides us with a clear 4 step programme for inclusion and diversity.

The first step is the understanding our own data and research through two surveys. An organisational survey has been completed by XXX, your Kaleidoscope Champion already. We will be sharing these details XXXX.

Now it is your turn! Kaleidoscope Staff Survey!

What do you do?

<Follow this link> and answer all the questions. Simple.

There are 13 sections in total and it should take around 20 minutes to complete in one go. Don’t worry if you can’t complete it all at once, the platform will save your progress so you can come back later.

Your answers are completely anonymous, so please be as honest as you can. The Kaleidoscope Staff Survey is designed to be educational so will ask thought provoking questions. Please be as honest as you can be to help us understand the ‘voice’ of our staff body.

Once you have finished, hit “submit”. If you have any questions please contact <Kaleidoscope Champion name> at <Kaleidoscope Champion email address>.

Our deadline for completing this is XXX

What happens next?

Once the step 1 is complete, we will be able to see our results - step 2 - and use them to both find & close diversity and inclusion gaps, plus evidence our successes in the Kaleidoscope Action Plan (step 3). Kaleidoscope provide us with incredible recommendations and resources to close gaps and celebrate our successes. It will be a team approach!

Step 4 is when you all get access to the Champion Hub, a ‘Netflix’ style library full of DEI training. Any questions, please get in touch otherwise happy answering!

Oh, you can also join the Kaleidoscope community @kaleidoscope-innovation-research across socials and their website is https://kaleidoscope-research.org/

From <Kaleidoscope Champion>

Some members choose to launch their work with Kaleidoscope during a training day and complete the surveys within this day - others swop out an hour meeting. We are happy to discuss this with you in our ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions, Kaleidoscope Champion Network or with a member of the team, but the choice is yours.

We would suggest that you try to launch it at a time where there won’t be a lot of absences, as a general rule of thumb, it’s best to try to avoid Christmas, Summer, public holidays and school holidays.

It is also key for them to complete this as individuals - this will not only mean it is quicker for them! - but it also means they can really focus on their responses.

We would always suggest you allow 2 x sessions of 30 minutes for them to complete it - and throw in biscuits too.

Because it needs to be a snapshot survey, it’s important that you limit the time the staff assessment period to three weeks.

Survey trends show that the majority (around 80%) of respondents answer in the first week with the remaining 20% answering over the next two weeks. Anything over this time is generally a waste. Leaving the Staff Surveys open for more than three weeks also risks the results no longer being an accurate “snapshot” of your status.

We don’t close the Staff Surveys for you, this is a step for you to do yourself so it’s important that you keep an eye on your engagement over time (see HOW DO I ENSURE MAXIMUM ENGAGEMENT WITH THE STAFF ASSESSMENT? section below) and close the survey after three weeks.

When you have launched your Staff Surveys a new box will appear on your dashboard.

When you are ready to close your Staff Surveys, simply click the “Close Surveys” button.

Closing your Staff Surveys is permanent and can’t be reversed.

When people start completion their Staff Assessments you will see box like this on your dashboard.

It shows you how long your Staff Surveys have been live for as well as how many people have completed it.

Once your Staff Surveys have been closed, the number of people who have completed it disappears so please do make a note of it before you hit the button, if you think it will be a useful stat for you to keep.

We recommend generating engagement with your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plans as a whole for a few weeks before you send out the Staff Surveys.

This will ensure that your workforce understands the ‘why’ behind the Staff Surveys ask.

Some of our members frame the Staff Surveys with a briefing, presentation, workshop or forum to engage staff around the topic. Other settings present it as part of an existing Diversity & Inclusion meeting, SDP or session.

Some of our members create an internal campaign around the Staff Surveys with creative reminding people that the Staff Survey is coming and why it’s important to engage with it. A pledge for DEI can be another way to engage.

We’ll be sharing more detailed case studies on how each of our members generated excitement and engagement around their Kaleidoscope Partnership soon.

The Kaleidoscope Platform is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of all participants. We strongly encourage all users to anonymise their comments and refrain from including any personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, specific locations, or identifiable descriptions.

While the Platform does not currently use automated tools to review and anonymise comments before processing, we rely on users to follow privacy guidelines when submitting their feedback. If any comments are found to contain PII, they will be flagged for review and may be removed or anonymised to ensure compliance with our data protection standards.

Your privacy is our priority, and we take every step to safeguard your data while allowing you to participate in the platform's activities.

You don’t. This was a conscious step we took to ensure staff anonymity.

Because you will have to email all staff to remind them to complete their Staff Surveys, we recommend taking the opportunity to thank those that already have in the emails. (See section WHEN AND HOW SHOULD I ‘CHASE’ STAFF TO COMPLETE THE STAFF SURVEY)

We can create a mechanism by which the Kaleidoscope Platform handles all communication and reminders, that way we will be able to schedule ‘chasers’ to anyone who has not yet completed their Staff Surveys, without breaking anonymity.

If this is a feature you would be interested in us developing, please let us know.

We recommend generating engagement with your Equality, Diversity and Inclusion plans as a whole for a few weeks before you send out the Staff Survey. This will ensure that your workforce understands the ‘why’ behind the Staff Survey ask.

We recommend sending three reminders to your staff-base.

At the end of week 1. The end of the first week is a great time to send an email to thank those that have completed the survey already, and remind the rest that there are 2 weeks left to complete it. This is also a good opportunity to remind everyone that their answers are anonymous, and to answer as honestly as they can.

At the end of week 2. The end of week 2 is a good time to thank the people who have completed the survey and remind everyone that there is just one week left in which to engage. Remind everyone again that their answers are anonymous and that you are looking for honesty and engagement.

With a couple of days to go. A couple of days before you close the Staff Surveys it’s a good idea to send one final thank you to the staff that have submitted their answers and poke those that have yet to do so. Remind them that everyone’s opinion of valid and important - regardless of their thoughts on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Once you have closed the surveys, you will automatically get your Staff Index and personalised reports and the Kaleidoscope Action Plan.

It is at this point, you will be able to look at the research and data produced by your own setting.

You will have ‘flagged’ areas to focus on (if you wish), you can use the surfaced demographics to work out which groups you are working best for - and those you need to close.

We have also added the Kaleidoscope Action Plan for your setting - and you can share this with your chosen representatives (just as you could the Inclusion Audit reports) by using your ‘Manage Viewers’ control!

You will also see you can now share your Kaleidoscope Champion Hub link with your staff, and you can even request your organisation’s demographic data if you wish too.

Like the Champion Audit, these are RAG (Red, Amber, Green).

These are a likert scale - Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Disagree or Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.

Some questions have a n/a option. These are grey.

All tick-box responses will be purple.

Strongly agree & agree = Green

Neither Agree or Disagree = Amber

Disagree or Strongly disagree = red

n/a = grey

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Regarding Sections 2, 8 + 9:

Reverse-Scored Questions and How the Platform Handles Them

Some survey questions in the GEC Platform are reverse scored. This simply means that the question is phrased in a negative way — for example, “I have been discriminated against”.

To keep the insights easy to read and consistent across all questions, the platform automatically flips the results of these reverse-scored items. This means Champions don’t need to worry about adjusting or interpreting the scores — the Platform does this automatically.

So, no matter how a question is worded:

• Green always means a positive experience (e.g. “I have not been discriminated against”).

• Amber represents a neutral or mixed experience.

• Red always signals a negative experience (e.g. “I have been discriminated against”).

This ensures that all insights are displayed consistently, where green = good, amber = neutral, and red = negative, and that data feeds accurately into the Staff and Student Inclusion Indexes.

By doing this, we make sure our Champions can focus on understanding what the data tells them — rather than worrying about how it’s been calculated.

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Added to this are orange ‘flags’ that our Collective have seemed to be important areas of focus for you.

Green ‘DEI’ cups to show where staff have responded strongly to the great work you have done with agreeing 80% or more in total.

If you need any help reading your results, please contact platform@kaleidoscope-research.org and we will be able to assist you.

Use the RAG rating to help you understand the voice of your staff. You can then see the demographics - top 3 and bottom 3 or surface up all of your demographics through our widget.

Use our inbuilt Kaleidoscope coaching ‘recommendations’ to help you close gaps. These can be personalised and added to your Kaleidoscope Action Plan.