Exeter College, Oxford: Building a more connected, responsive employee experience 

A quick insight: Exeter College, Oxford used employee feedback as a springboard for visible change. By improving communication, increasing leadership visibility and acting on practical suggestions, the College strengthened trust, reduced turnover and helped more staff feel heard, valued and part of the wider institution. That sustained progress is also what helped Exeter College stand out in the Inspire HE rankings for employee experience.

An introduction to Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College, Oxford is one of the University of Oxford’s constituent colleges, bringing together academic, professional and support staff across three sites. In recent years, the College has taken strong, clear steps to strengthen employee experience by creating more opportunities for staff to be heard, improving communication and acting visibly on feedback. 

That sustained focus on employee voice, leadership visibility and practical action has helped Exeter College stand out in this year’s Inspire HE rankings, where it was recognised for its employee experience.  

Following its first employee survey in 2022, the College used staff feedback to shape meaningful changes across communication, leadership visibility, benefits and development. In its 2025 survey, it also saw a 24-point increase in the proportion of staff who believed action would be taken as a result of the survey. 

Starting with action, not just feedback

Exeter College’s employee voice journey began with its first survey in 2022. What stands out is not simply that the College listened, but that it acted in practical, visible ways. 

In response to feedback, the College introduced termly all-staff meetings, expanded staff representation on internal committees and launched an Employee Suggestion scheme. It also made smaller but meaningful changes, from reintroducing staff social events to installing new coffee machines that helped reduce perceived divides between staff groups. 

We know that staff are far more likely to trust employee listening when they can see what happens next. Exeter College focused first on practical changes that demonstrated momentum, while also addressing larger themes around communication and leadership. 

Strengthening communication and leadership visibility

One of the clearest messages from Exeter College’s 2022 survey was that communication and leadership needed attention. Over the following two to three years, the College made a conscious effort to improve both. 

Senior leaders became more visible, including the Rector (the head of the College)_spending time working alongside staff in a range of day-to-day roles. The College also used face-to-face group meetings to discuss proposed changes and hear concerns directly before decisions were finalised. 

This helped staff feel better informed about how the College operates, where it is heading and how they fit into that wider picture. It also appears to have strengthened confidence in leadership and direction, with the College seeing stronger results in these areas in later survey findings. 

Creating a stronger sense of community

Exeter College’s approach shows that employee experience is shaped by everyday signals as much as big initiatives. Alongside structural changes, the College invested in small but important actions that helped build belonging and reduce barriers. 

The return of a summer social event, continued Christmas celebrations and improvements to shared staff facilities all helped create a more inclusive environment. The College also listened carefully to staff feedback on language, choosing to refer to ‘professional and support staff’ rather than ‘non-academic staff’. 

These changes may seem simple on the surface, but they speak to a broader principle. When organisations pay attention to how people are included, described and brought together, culture becomes more intentional and more human. 

Turning survey results into practical action

Exeter College took a structured but pragmatic approach to action planning. After the 2022 survey, the HR Manager and Bursars reviewed the data, including open-text comments, before grouping responses into broad themes. These were then discussed with the Staff Committee. 

The College started with ‘low hanging fruit’ that could be implemented quickly and show staff that feedback was being taken seriously. After that, it focused on the themes that attracted the highest volume of comments and were clearly causing concern. 

Ownership sat with the people best placed to progress each action and the Staff Committee continued to review feedback and progress over the following year. This is a strong example of how to move from insight to action without overcomplicating the process. 

Why qualitative feedback mattered so much

For Exeter College, headline scores were useful for benchmarking and getting an overall view. But the real detail came from employee comments. 

The open-question responses gave the College a much more granular understanding of staff experience and helped pinpoint specific issues within its operation. By grouping individual comments into themes, the team could see more clearly where concerns were concentrated and where action would matter most. 

This is a useful reminder that the story behind the scores is often where the most practical insight sits. Comments help organisations understand not just what people think, but why they think it and what needs to change. 

Supporting staff through policies that make a real difference

Exeter College has also strengthened employee experience through flexible working and staff-support policies that have practical day-to-day value. 

Its homeworking policy allows eligible staff to work from home for up to two days per week and the College has agreed flexible patterns for some staff who needed reduced hours due to childcare or health reasons. It also offers generous annual leave, a strong sick pay scheme, family-friendly benefits including paid Additional Paternity Leave and access to support such as an Employee Assistance Programme. 

What makes these policies meaningful is that they are helping staff stay in roles they value, manage pressures more effectively and access support more affordably. In that sense, employee experience is being shaped not just by culture and communication, but by practical conditions that help people thrive. 

What changed beyond the survey scores?

The impact of Exeter College’s work has not only shown up in survey responses. It has also appeared in wider organisational measures. 

Between 2022 and 2024, employee turnover fell from 22.7% to 14.2%. While turnover rose to 19.8% in 2025, the College reports that this was largely driven by personal circumstances such as relocation or returning to study, rather than dissatisfaction with working there. 

The College also points to low levels of formal grievance, with issues more commonly relating to interpersonal differences than broader operational concerns. Taken together, these signs suggest the employee voice programme is helping to improve the working environment in ways that extend beyond the survey itself. They also help explain why Exeter College was recognised as a standout in the Inspire HE rankings. The College’s progress has not come from one-off initiatives, but from consistent action to strengthen communication, trust and the day-to-day employee experience. 

The most transformative change

When asked what has been most transformative, Exeter College points to its termly all-staff meetings. Introduced in direct response to the 2022 survey, these meetings have become an important forum for communication, visibility and community. 

They bring together staff from different teams, help people engage with the wider life of the College and create opportunities for more direct interaction with senior leaders. They have also helped the College communicate a broader sense of shared purpose and future direction. 

Not everyone can attend every meeting, especially across three sites, but the impact has still been significant. In many ways, these meetings reflect the wider strength of Exeter College’s approach: simple, visible actions that build trust over time. 

The challenge of keeping progress visible

One of the hardest parts of improving employee experience at Exeter College has been communication. Not because action has not happened, but because it can be difficult to make sure everyone sees and remembers it. 

A significant proportion of staff do not have a College email address and staff are spread across three sites, making it harder to rely on standard internal communications. The College has used line manager cascades, all-staff meetings, pre-survey communications and leadership messages to help close that gap. 

This is an important lesson for other institutions. Making progress is one challenge. Making that progress visible is another. As Exeter College notes, changes can quickly become the new normal, which means organisations need to keep reminding people how feedback has shaped action. 

What’s next for Exeter College?

Looking ahead, Exeter College sees career progression and personal development as one of its next priorities. This emerged as a theme in the 2025 survey and is now an area where the College is looking to invest further. 

It is already taking steps to promote development opportunities more actively and is considering whether to introduce more structured performance or development review processes. That next phase feels like a natural progression. The College has already strengthened communication, responsiveness and trust. Now it is looking at how to build clearer long-term development pathways for staff. 

This is often where employee experience work becomes even more powerful, when organisations move from fixing friction to helping people see a future. 

How People Insight helped

Exeter College found several parts of the People Insight platform particularly valuable in helping it listen better and act with more confidence. 

The comparisons page gave a quick visual guide to which departments were feeling most and least engaged, helping the team focus attention where it could have the greatest impact. Filtering also allowed for more granular analysis of responses, making it easier to understand different experiences across the organisation. 

Prism, our integrated AI, was especially useful in surfacing the key themes emerging from open-text feedback, giving the team a quicker route into the story behind the scores. Together, these tools helped Exeter College move beyond headline results and make better-informed decisions about where to act first. 

Lessons we can take on board

Exeter College’s story shows that employee experience does not improve through one big initiative. It improves when organisations listen carefully, act visibly and keep building from there. 

A few lessons stand out. Start by responding to feedback in ways people can see. Use comments as seriously as scores when deciding what to do next. Focus on communication and leadership visibility if trust needs rebuilding. Do not underestimate the cultural value of practical, human changes. And keep reminding people what has changed, because progress can quickly become invisible once it becomes normal. 

Most of all, Exeter College shows that a more structured employee voice programme can help people feel more connected to the wider organisation, not just their immediate role or team. 

Work with us to create an inspirational culture

Exeter College’s story shows that employee experience does not improve through one big initiative. It improves when organisations listen carefully, act visibly and keep building from there. 

The College’s recognition in the Inspire HE rankings reflects more than strong scores alone. It reflects the fact that the College has listened, acted and continued to build on what staff told it matters most. 

Get in touch to learn how we can help you build an inspirational culture shaped by sharper listening and smarter action.