XRUK Circle Survey
In July 2025 the Hive set up a temporary working group to survey all members of every XRUK Working Group circle within the Hive about how XRUK is working as an organisation. This was done in close colloboration with the Data Analytics and Insights team (DAIC).
This work was intended to complement the 'All the Proposals to the Hive' work (after a number of big-picture proposals were submitted to the Hive) and the Deep Listening carried out recently by the Systems & Cultures circle. The overarching aim was to help process and learn from the hard times, stresses and tensions facing XRUK and it's volunteers in 2025, so that we can be ready to move forward stronger.
What we did - Survey every member of each XRUK working group circle and subcircle within the Hive to identify organisational tensions, then analysed the responses and created various reports.
What is an organisational tension? - In XR, tensions are things we notice that ought to be improved within our movement - they can be problems or opportunities (or both).
What we looked for - Structural or process issues that make it harder for circles to do their work effectively - things like communication gaps between teams, unclear processes, resource issues, or coordination problems.
Why this matters - Teams know best what's working and what isn't, but sometimes it's hard to know how to suggest changes. By giving all members of XRUK working groups a voice, this produced insights have helped us identify common patterns across XRUK and differentiate between widespread organisational issues and circle-specific challenges.
Overview of results - A top-level overview will be added soon.
What happens next - Analysis of the survey responses has helped identify where our organisational setup helps or hinders the important work. The reports contain a number of suggestion for recommended next steps. The communication of the reports including space for further suggestions/ideas were in the form of:
- a presentation
- for Hive, Operations, Systems and Culture circles
- for a Zoom call with volunteers from XRUK working groups invited
- a summary report with next steps recommendations
- a quantitative report
- a qualitative report based from a single free-text question
Future work - A new mandate for a working group will then take this work forward and implement ideas and solutions, co-creating these with relevent teams and getting advice and input from various people when required.
FAQs
Where are the full reports? - the details of the full reports are available to all members of XRUK circles (the same people who took part in the survey). A summary of the findings will be shared here once the initial presentations are done and the people who took part have had chance to ask for clarifications.
Why weren't the Nations/Regions or Local Groups surveyed? - the questions were designed very specifically for XRUK circle issues - lot of them to do with the circle / sub-circle structures. Doing a similar piece of work focussing on some of the same issues - e.g. communications - could also be done separately for N/R/LGs at some point. But this team was tasked with looking at XRUK working groups.
This is something I'm really interested in, can I get involved? - the roles for the next phase of this project (focussing on the development and implementation of solutions) will be advertised here, once the full scope of that next phase is mandated.