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Employee Health & Wellness Surveys
Understand the real state of your people's physical, mental and financial wellbeing. Our Statisticians, Data Scientists and Industrial Psychologists turn confidential employee feedback into targeted, evidence-based wellness strategies.
ContactAn employee wellness survey gives you a clear, confidential picture of how your people are coping with stress, workload, burnout and the pressures of life outside work. Drawing on 28 years of organisational survey experience, DMSA helps you move from guessing what employees need to knowing.
Our highly experienced team of Statisticians, Data Scientists and Industrial Psychologists manages the full process, from Questionnaire Design and Online Hosting through to Data Analysis, Dashboards, Reporting and Executive Presentation, so your wellness programme is built on evidence.
Benefits of an Employee Wellness Survey
A well-designed wellbeing survey replaces assumptions with data. It shows where pressure is building, who is most affected, and which interventions will make the biggest difference to health, productivity and retention.
Show employees that leadership genuinely cares about their health and wellbeing.
Detect burnout and stress hotspots by department, site or role before they lead to absenteeism and resignations.
Direct your wellness budget to the initiatives employees actually need, rather than generic programmes.
Measure awareness, uptake and impact of your EAP and Employee Wellness Programme.
Build an evidence base for your psychosocial risk assessment under the OHS Act.
Track wellbeing trends over time and prove the return on your people investments.
Trusted by leading organisations across South Africa
Why Employee Wellbeing Matters Now
Workplace stress and burnout are now business risks that affect productivity, absenteeism, retention and safety. For South African employers, mental health in the workplace has moved firmly onto the HR and compliance agenda.
36%
of South African employees experience excessive daily stress
52%
of employees surveyed reported a diagnosed mental health condition
6 in 10
South African workers say they would leave their job if they could afford to
Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace; SADAG Working Life Survey.
What Our Employee Wellness Survey Measures
Our Industrial Psychologists design every survey around your objectives, drawing on established wellbeing and burnout constructs. A typical survey covers these dimensions:
Physical Health
Energy, sleep, exercise, nutrition and the physical demands of the job.
Mental Health & Stress
Stress levels, anxiety, emotional wellbeing and resilience at work.
Burnout & Workload
Exhaustion, workload pressure, resourcing and recovery time.
Work-Life Balance
Working hours, flexibility, after-hours demands and family responsibilities.
Financial Wellbeing
Financial stress and its effect on focus, attendance and performance.
Psychological Safety
Feeling safe to speak up, ask for help and report bullying or harassment.
Social Connection
Belonging, team relationships, manager support and isolation.
Wellness Programme & EAP
Awareness, trust, uptake and perceived value of the support you offer.
Supporting Your Psychosocial Risk Assessment
Psychological health is increasingly recognised as part of every employer's health and safety duty.
From compliance requirement to people strategy
The Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to provide, as far as reasonably practicable, a working environment without risk to employee health. With psychosocial risk now part of South Africa's national OHS strategy, and organisations adopting ISO 45003 guidance on psychological health and safety at work, HR and OHS teams need reliable data on psychosocial hazards.
A DMSA employee wellness survey gives you a scientifically sound, employee-informed view of risks such as excessive workload, job insecurity, poor management practices and bullying. You can use it to prioritise interventions, document your response and track improvement over time.
Our Survey Process
DMSA manages the entire survey lifecycle with scientific rigour and strict confidentiality, which is essential when employees are sharing information about their health and wellbeing.
1
Questionnaire Design
Our Industrial Psychologists design a tailor-made wellbeing questionnaire using validated constructs, tested for reliability and validity by our Data Scientists.
2
Confidential Hosting & Administration
As an independent third party, we host your survey online or on paper, managing distribution, reminders and anonymity protocols that build trust and response rates.
3
Data Analysis & Dashboards
Our Data Scientists identify wellbeing and burnout hotspots by department, site and demographic, and compare results with previous cycles and the DMSA benchmark.
4
Report & Presentation
Our reports answer the "So What Now?" question with prioritised short, medium and long-term actions, presented to your Exco and Senior Management.
Wellbeing Themes We Cover
Examples of health and wellness themes we can include in your survey:
Stress
Burnout
Workload
Work Life Balance
Mental Health
Physical Health
Sleep & Energy
Financial Wellbeing
Psychological Safety
Bullying & Harassment
Manager Support
Flexible Working
Resilience
Social Connection
EAP Awareness
Absenteeism & Presenteeism
Survey Dashboard & Action Planning
Our Survey Dashboard System goes beyond reporting. It helps your leadership team act on wellbeing results and track progress.
Interactive Dashboard with Action Planning
Slice and dice wellbeing results by team, department or demographic, always within strict anonymity thresholds. The unique Action Planning component provides strategic insights and recommendations for a selected focus area, such as burnout or financial stress, and then monitors progress on those actions over time. DMSA's Industrial Psychologists produce reports that answer the "So What Now?" question, with recommended actions in the short, medium and long term.
Related Surveys & Services
Wellness surveys work best as part of a wider employee listening strategy.
Engagement, Climate & Culture Surveys
Add a wellbeing module to your engagement survey to see how the two connect.
Find out more →Pulse Surveys
Short, regular wellbeing check-ins between full survey cycles.
Find out more →HR Analytics
Link wellbeing data to absenteeism, turnover and performance.
Find out more →Organisational Development
Turn survey findings into leadership and culture interventions.
Find out more →Ready to understand your people's wellbeing?
Speak to a DMSA consultant about a confidential employee wellness survey designed for your organisation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about employee health and wellness surveys at DMSA.
An employee wellness survey (also called an employee wellbeing survey) is a confidential questionnaire that measures how employees are doing across physical health, mental health and stress, burnout, work-life balance, financial wellbeing and social connection. It also assesses how well your workplace and wellness programme support them. The results show where to focus your wellbeing strategy and budget.
An engagement survey measures how committed and motivated employees are. A wellness survey measures how healthy and well-supported they are. The two are closely linked, because burnout and chronic stress erode engagement. DMSA can run a standalone wellness survey or add a wellbeing module to your engagement, climate or culture survey to avoid survey fatigue.
Confidentiality is critical when employees share information about their health. DMSA acts as an independent third-party administrator. Responses are collected without personal identifiers, results are only reported in aggregate, and we never report on any group of fewer than five respondents. Your organisation never sees individual answers. Our approach is designed to align with POPIA's requirements for handling sensitive personal information.
Yes. The OHS Act requires employers to identify and manage risks to employee health, and psychosocial hazards such as excessive workload, job insecurity, poor management practices and bullying are increasingly part of that duty. A DMSA wellness survey provides a structured, employee-informed evidence base that your HR and OHS teams can use to identify psychosocial risks, prioritise interventions and track improvement over time.
Yes. We measure employees' awareness, trust, uptake and perceived value of your Employee Wellness Programme, EAP and other support. Combined with HR analytics on absenteeism and turnover, this shows which initiatives are delivering a return and which need rethinking.
Most organisations run a full wellness survey annually, supported by short pulse surveys during the year to track stress and burnout after major changes such as restructuring. A typical DMSA survey takes four to eight weeks from briefing to final report. Contact us at dmsa.co.za/contact to discuss your wellbeing survey.
