How to create an Workplace Risk Assessment (WRA) Survey

An WRA (Workplace Risk Assessment) is a legal requirement for most countries. It should be seen as a tool for systematically working with the work environment in the workplace.

The WRA must be based on a collaboration between management and employees and must be accessible to both parties. It must be revised at least every 3 years or when there are changes that are significant for the work environment.

With GAIS' WRA survey, it is easy to send the current WRA questions out to employees.

Guide contents

How to create an WRA on the GAIS platform
Name the survey
Select frequency, sending time, and end date
Write the invitation text
Invite participants
Overview of filters
Overview of the organization
Comments and dialogue
Build the question framework
1. Mandatory questions
2. Optional questions
3. Extra questions
4. Conditional questions
5. Anonymous and non-anonymous questions
Settings
Check your measurement and send it out
Create segments

1. How to create an APV on the GAIS platform

Go to https://app.gais.dk/auth/#/login and log in with your GAIS user.

Here, select Surveys -> Create new Survey -> WRA -> Create Survey.

2. Name the Survey

Name your WRA survey. We recommend a generic name such as WRA + company name.

3. Select Frequency, Sending Time, and End Date

Frequency: You can decide on the frequency at which you want to conduct the survey. You can choose for the WRA to be a one-off or for it to run every year, every other year, or every third year. You can always change your choice, so the date is not binding. If you want to track development over time, we recommend keeping the surveys in the same series.

Sending time: Once you have selected a frequency, you need to decide if the survey should be sent out when you click Review and Send or if there should be a start date. If you choose a start date, the survey will not be sent out automatically, but you will receive an email. You can choose for the survey to be sent out automatically by checking the box on the gear icon and marking the field for automatic sending.

End date: You must also choose an end date for responses. This can always be extended, even while the survey is ongoing. When the end date is reached, the collection of additional responses is closed.

4. Write the Invitation Text

You must write the text that participants will receive along with the link to the survey itself. GAIS has created a predefined text that you can use as a starting point. You can drag the dotted lines to expand the text field. Also, select who should be listed as the sender of the invitation.

Get inspiration for the text here.

If you have defined in your company’s Organization that the survey should be sent to employee groups in different languages, you can create different versions of the invitation text for the various languages.

5. Invite Participants

If you have created an Organization for your company on the company profile, you can use it as a data source for your survey. This is a great advantage.

Learn about creating an organization.

Swipe the button to the right to use Organization as the data source. With the arrow key, you can choose whether to send to everyone in the organization or to some of the segments you have defined in your organization.

If the organization is not updated, you can update it. Learn how here.

6. Overview of Filters

In this section, you can see which data filters can be used. If you have created an organization, your filters are pulled directly from there.

Learn more about creating and using the Organization to define filters.

7. Overview of the Organization

Here, an overview of the managers is shown, retrieved from the company's Organization.

8. Comments and Dialogue

Here, you choose whether it should be possible for the survey's participants to write comments, as well as whether it should be possible to reply to these comments and thereby engage in dialogue.

Comments: You can choose whether participants should have the option to write comments in free-text form when they complete their survey. The comments are always anonymous and can be of great benefit when working further with the surveys's results.

Dialogue: You can also choose whether there should be an option to engage in dialogue with the participants about the comments they have provided. This takes place on the GAIS platform in an anonymous chat room after the survey has been completed. If you enable dialogue, you must choose who is allowed to participate—this can be either the company profile’s administrators and/or the immediate manager.

9. Build the Question Framework

9a. Mandatory questions

An WRA contains 24 questions distributed across the main factor Work Environment and the four underlying factors Physical Work Environment, Psychological Work Environment, Sickness, and Stress. The first four main questions are mandatory.

The remaining 20 questions are distributed across four factors that are, by default, selected in the measurement. However, it is possible to deselect one or more of these factors as needed.

Learn more about the Questionaire.

9b. Optional questions

It is possible to choose from a number of optional questions for the different factors from GAIS' question catalog.

The individual question is added by selecting it. Remember to choose whether it should be mandatory for participants to answer.

When you have finished adding questions, click Update questions, and the optional questions will now be included in the factors they belong to. It is possible to rearrange the order if you wish by placing the mouse on the six gray dots and dragging the question up or down.

9c. Extra questions

You can also formulate your own unique questions and add them to the question framework.

Learn more about how to formulate and translate extra questions into the relevant languages.

9d. Conditional questions

In GAIS, it is possible to create conditional questions. This is a type of question that becomes available depending on the answer to a previous question.

You can create conditional questions from both optional questions and the extra questions you formulate yourself. For example, you can select a number of follow-up harassment questions in the catalog and make them conditional on the participant answering Yes to having experienced or witnessed harassment.

9e. Anonymous and non-anonymous questions

Questions in the Physical Work Environment category can be made non-anonymous, which enables a potentially easier dialogue with specific employees about physical conditions in the workplace. This can be edited for each question by clicking the pencil icon.

It will be clearly indicated to the participant when a question is not anonymous.

It is important to emphasize that questions about the psychological work environment are always anonymous.

Learn more about anonymity in GAIS here.

10. Settings

Here you have various settings options:

a) Show name of immediate manager for relevant questions

If this function is enabled, the immediate manager's name will be shown for relevant questions within the psychological work environment.

b) Allow mini-reports

You have the option to enable "mini-reports." At GAIS, we take anonymity very seriously, and therefore the main rule is that it is not possible to view reports with fewer than 5 people. However, in many companies, there are small units and departments with few employees. Therefore, for paying customers, there is an option for high-level mini-reports, which allows small departments of 3-4 employees to get their own, but simpler, report without filtering. In this way, we maintain anonymity.

c) Benchmark

In the WRA survey, the only possible benchmark is to measure a segment of the report against the entire report.

d) Whistleblower display

If you have created a connection between your whistleblower scheme and the GAIS platform via the company profile, you can choose where the whistleblower access should be displayed to participants in the APV measurement settings.

11. Test Your Survey and Send Your Invitations

When you have finished all the settings, you can test what the survey will look like by clicking Test survey or by sending a test email with an invitation.

When everything looks correct, you send out the WRA survey by clicking Send invitations now.

Once the participants have completed the survey, each individual immediately receives a personal report. When at least 5 participants have completed the survey, you as an administrator can follow the results in the company report.

Learn about understanding and analyzing the APV report.

12. Create Segments

You can create data segments of your survey. Data segments are subsets of a survey, for example, a department or participants in a specific age group. It is a great advantage to create segments when you want to share part of a report with others but do not want to give access to the entire report.

Learn how here.