Indiana University Bloomington
PA-12: Assessing Employee Satisfaction

A job-satisfaction survey of faculty members at Indiana University Bloomington was conducted for IU by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education -- known as COACHE -- a consortium based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Respondents include tenured faculty and librarians, tenure-track faculty and librarians, and non-tenure-track academic appointees in all schools and departments. IU Bloomington faculty members were sent an email message in mid-October inviting them to participate and directing them to the website for the online survey. They received follow-up reminder emails. Participation in the 25-minute survey was voluntary. The survey was open Spring semester 2016. https://provost.indiana.edu/doc/coache-2016.pdf Professional and service staff were not included in this survey. Faculty make up 24% of IUB staff. Additionally, The College of Arts and Sciences, IU's largest college, surveyed representatives of IU's professional, service, and paraprofessional staff (this group, plus faculty, totals 87% of IU's workforce). College of Arts and Sciences used a 3rd party survey, the Q12 Gallop Survey. The surveyed was administered Fall 2015.

Although data from the 2016 faculty COACHE study is not yet publicly available, IU did respond to feedback from the previous iteration of the survey, completed in 2013, with additional resources for faculty. For example, the survey found that "Associate Professors were particularly in need of more institutional support for their research and creative activity. The Institute for Advanced Study has been reorganized to target a range of resources for mid-level faculty. Examples include IAS Individual Research Awards, Collaborative Fellowships, Research Consultation Fellowships, funds to host conferences, and the Residential Fellows Program." -COACHE Furthermore, the Office of the Provost says it will use the survey in the following way: "The Office of the Provost will use the results to determine areas of faculty satisfaction and identify the most important targets for improvement." The College of Arts and Sciences 2015 Q12 Gallop Survey results have not been published. The survey administration task force (The Organizational Assessment Advisory Council) found three key takeaways: employees want better internal communication, employees want access to management and leadership training, employees want a breakdown of "silos" across units and clearer communication on roles. The University is taking steps to address these initial results, including adding employee brownbag lunches and townhall meetings to encourage more communication and feedback. Several members of the 2015 Organizational Assessment Advisory Council are now working with University HR to develop and administer one campus-wide employee satisfaction assessment for all groups, to be finalized in 2017 or 2018.