The first step (Step 1) is simply to get in touch and let us know if you’d like to take part in the research. For Step 2, the Project RISE team will provide you with a Study Agreement Form to sign confirming that your organization is ready to participate. In Step 3, our team will send you the employee recruitment email that includes the link to the survey and other accompanying documentation (one-page summary and FAQ for participants).

Recruitment will stay open through July 2018. We encourage companies to sign up early, so that we can build an accurate projection of our likely sample size, which will determine the statistical analyses we are able to conduct and the metrics we can report to you. Your organization can set an internal completion deadline if you would like to ensure that your employees complete the survey by an earlier date.

To be eligible to participate, employees must work full-time as a scientist, tech professional, engineer, or mathematician. If you are unsure whether your employees are eligible, please email us at RISE@psych.ubc.ca.

No, although it would be ideal to have eligible employees from your organization complete the survey early so that we can report back to you on your organization’s level of participation and determine whether additional recruitment efforts would be necessary.

The survey should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Yes. We ask that your organization allow eligible employees to complete the survey at a time convenient to them during work hours. The employee time spent completing the survey will be considered an in-kind contribution from your organization to the Engendering Success in STEM: Project RISE research and will be included in reporting to our federal funding agency.

There is no minimum. Ideally we would like to recruit as many participants as possible! In general, the more participants we have from a given organization, the better we will be able to provide aggregate information about your organization to you that affords comparison with other organizations within STEM industries.

If your organization has at least 30 employees who participate in the survey you will receive a report on how your organization compares to others within your industry who complete the survey.

In the Workplace Culture Survey, we go beyond measuring the presence or absence of organizational policies to examine how the following factors can influence employees’ experiences in their STEM careers: • feelings of social support and belonging at work • organizational commitment • perceptions of organizational climate and gender-inclusive policies • attitudes toward gender-inclusive policies • perceptions of gender bias at work

These data will help to inform an evidence-based intervention that we can deliver with your employees, and will provide the basis of a report to help you direct your organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts to evidence-based practices.

As researchers, our team members have broad interests in many kinds of diversity. However, the focus of the Engendering Success in STEM consortium (and our partnership grant) is on promoting women in STEM. As such, the Workplace Culture Survey has been designed to focus on gender diversity. To the extent that a sufficient number of members of other underrepresented groups respond to the survey, we will analyze and report data on responses from other groups.

A summary report of recommendations for competitive workplace diversity & inclusion initiatives will be provided to your organization. Additionally, the Project RISE team will prepare a variety of white papers, infographics, and reports summarizing the aggregate results, which will be hosted on our website (successinstem.ca).

Once data collection has begun (and prior to your organization’s internal completion deadline), a RISE team member will update you on the response rate for your organization. If the response rate is lower than expected/desired, we can discuss with you whether it would be worthwhile to increase recruitment efforts.

We kindly ask that you provide the Project RISE team with a letter identifying the in-kind contribution your organization made to the RISE Workplace Culture Survey. To help with this calculation we will provide you with the number of employees from your organization who participated in the survey. As a guide, the below calculation should give you an accurate estimate of your in-kind contribution: In-kind contribution = Monetary value of time spent by staff on planning with the Project RISE team and recruitment of eligible employees + monetary value of employee time (approx. 30 minutes) spent completing the survey during work hours. Please address the letter to Engendering Success in STEM Consortium: Project RISE. We can accept either a digital signature or a signed scanned copy returned to RISE@psych.ubc.ca.