Introduction

Almost every project we do is undertaken with support of the AlphaPlus’ associates. We’re aware that the strength and depth of capability at AlphaPlus relies in no small part on our associates – on your expertise and diligence, and your understanding of the complex education world in which we work.

We want to ensure we are offering sufficient support and that the AlphaPlus associate network is working as effectively as possible. With this in mind, we recently asked our associates to fill in a survey, so that we could better understand your experience of being an AlphaPlus associate.

The survey responses were anonymous. In total, 138 associates filled out the survey (19% of the database at the time).

This report contains a summary of key highlights from the survey and how we will be taking your feedback on board.

Please note that these findings are confidential to you – our associate community, and the team at AQA AlphaPlus.

Overview

We’re delighted that overall, the results of this year’s survey are very positive, and broadly similar to the previous survey we ran in March 2022.

Approximately 90-95% of associates who have worked with us (and responded) were either very satisfied or satisfied with project management, work culture, work compensation and appreciation of work carried out, and replied that they would be very likely to work with us on another project.

This is excellent news. We rely on associates to be integral parts of the teams that carry out large projects, and it is good to hear that associates have such a positive view of AlphaPlus.

View of AlphaPlus

The vast majority of associates responding would describe AlphaPlus positively. The three most common descriptions were collaborative committed to improving education, collaborative, and fair (the same as in previous years).

Recommending AlphaPlus

91% of respondents would recommend us to a friend or a colleague who was considering registering as an associate.

This is excellent to hear as we often rely on our associates to pass on information about upcoming work to people in your circle.

Keeping profile up to date

62% of associates responding have told us that they keep their associate database profile up to date and complete (compared to 52% in 2022). However, as of 5^th May 2023, of the 732 associates on our database:

• 38% of associates have a pen portrait as part of their database profile compared to 42% from 2022.
• 47% of associates have uploaded a CV compared to 39% in 2022.
• Of associates who joined the database before 1^st January 2022, only 5% have updated their profile since 1^st January 2022.
• 29% of associates in our database haven’t updated their profile in the last 5 years.

We recommend that you regularly update the information in your Associate Database profile. If you have all your details filled in and a recent copy of your CV uploaded as a .docx file, we’ll be more likely to be able to offer you work, particularly if the project is on a tight deadline.

Noting the point below about many associates wanting more work from AlphaPlus, we cannot stress strongly enough that maintaining an accurate and complete profile is the single most important thing you can do to increase the chance of work being offered.

We will shortly be sending out an email containing detailed instructions on how to update and maintain your database profile.

AlphaPlus fees

We are delighted to hear that 83.7% of associates responding find AlphaPlus’ compensation for work to be good or very good.

However, we would like to clarify one thing. When you are offered work with AlphaPlus, you will be told the number of days the work is expected to take, as well as the daily rate. If the work is taking much longer than anticipated to complete (for example because it is much more complicated than we originally thought), please get in contact with your project manager – we will consider extensions to the work and the associated fees.

Receiving more work

When asked what one thing they would change about working with AlphaPlus, 33% of associates wrote that they would like to receive more work.

The most common reason respondents gave for not working with us was that nothing in their area of expertise had come up (70% of respondents gave that as a reason).

As a consultancy, we are often forced to be very reactive, which means we are often unable to plan what sort of work we will be doing (i.e. one year we may be contracted to do a lot of test item writing, the next we might be asked to provide FE trainers for multiple projects – the work we do relies on what our customers want us to do).

This means that we have no practical way of controlling the nature and scale of work we are able to offer associates.

We understand that this can be very frustrating for our associates. We try to mitigate this as much as possible by:

• Giving associates as much warning as possible for upcoming work (often difficult as our customers often give us tight timescales)
• Trying to lower the burden for associates e.g. trying to make our database as easy to use as possible, avoiding sending unnecessary emails

Plans

We will be taking your feedback on board, and have made the following plans to improve the database and how it works for us and you:

• We have created an associate information pack which has all the joining information which we will update regularly. We will be sharing this pack with all associates shortly.
• We are creating a tutorial on using the associate database to make sure that you are all aware of how to make the most of your profile. We will also be sharing this shortly.
• We are reintroducing our associate newsletter to keep you updated on what we’re up to.

Conclusion

We are pleased with the results of this survey; it’s great to hear such a positive response from our associates.

We plan on running this survey annually. However, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to get in contact at any point throughout the year.

Thanks again for responding to this survey and for all of your hard work for AlphaPlus.