(Newest update: March 11, 2020; see below)

What is the employee experience (EX) of a pandemic? Companies are making plans and governments are tracking the spread of the virus, but who is listening to the voice of the employees? What impact are they experiencing because of the coronavirus, even if they aren’t exposed to it? Help us track and share that.

TAKE THE 10-MINUTE SURVEY: CLICK HERE

(Update: March 11, 2020)

We have released our first public update of the data we have collected from our #pandemicEX survey project. Please read this post to see the first data analysis, and follow #pandemicEX to learn more as it comes out. A note on methodology is required here. As you know, we have solicited voluntary survey responses from people around the world. We have data from at least a dozen countries; that’s not in sufficient numbers, however, to report on anything other than the US sample. In the US, knowing that we would have what we researchers call a “convenience sample” of self-selected respondents, we also worked with a sample provider to give us a baseline of 470 adults in the US who work at least part- or full-time. Though the #pandemicEX survey was in the field and is still in the field from March 2 to the present, the survey we fielded through a sample provider was only in the field from March 3 to March 6. All data we are currently sharing comes from this sample as we continue to validate the convenience sample against the more representative sample provided by our partner. For methodology-minded folks, the sample we derived from our partner was balanced at the outgo and further restricted via quotas to match sex, age, and US census region breakouts as described by US Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data about the employed adult population. We will continue to monitor our convenience sample, and we will perform a second wave of partner-assisted data collection next week to update the data and see how we can make better use of our open-internet sample. Stay tuned for more details as we can release them.

(Update: March 6, 2020)

We have begun analyzing the hundreds of responses we have so far. We have posted a video blog of a brief interview with security and risk VP and Group Director Stephanie Balaouras. Please encourage more contributors, and we hope many will be willing to participate in the ongoing panel so we can track changes over time. The new plan is to survey every two weeks, sharing data in the in-between weeks. Data sharing starts next Monday. Track #pandemicEX and follow @forrester to get the updates as they come out.

(Original post: March 6, 2020)

Governments and organizations around the world are watching the spread of the coronavirus (officially called 2019-nCoV), which causes the disease called COVID-19. While the risk to most individuals in most places is low, each organization is making prudent decisions to limit the spread of the new coronavirus by canceling conferences such as Mobile World Congress or by limiting travel by employees. Between watching the spread of the actual virus and watching the response of companies, including their own, employees may be feeling uncertain, anxious, or frustrated.

The purpose of the PandemicEX project is to rapidly collect and share ongoing data about the ways that companies and employees are managing the risk of coronavirus at work. (*If you are looking for info on the spread of the virus or the disease it causes, we are not that source; please refer to public health officials such as the CDC in the US or other local and area resources.)

You can use this page to do two things:

  1. Add your voice to our survey. Take the anonymous, 10-minute survey available at https://bit.ly/pandemicEXsurvey. We will collect data each week and attempt to validate and analyze data on a continuous basis. You can take the survey only once. At the end of the survey, you will be invited to join a temporary panel that will retake a 5-minute version of the survey approximately weekly. This will allow us to track the data over time.
  2. Review our topline data. At least weekly, we will present the summary data of how companies are responding to the coronavirus, how employees feel about it, and the degree of confidence people have in their company or organization’s ability to manage this. The first wave of data should be available by Monday, March 9. We will post a link to results here below. Follow our Forrester @forrester Twitter handle and the hashtag #pandemicEX to be notified of regular updates as they come in.

For Forrester clients, we will be conducting deeper analysis of the data for you, supplemented by our regular survey data that is only available to you. Also, our security and risk management practice has been actively writing to clients about how to prepare a business continuity plan for a pandemic.