University of Vermont
PA-12: Assessing Employee Satisfaction

The University of Vermont’s governance and advisory body for non-represented staff, Staff Council, conducts a biennial survey. This survey is developed and distributed by the Staff Council Outreach Committee (which contains representatives from multiple university areas) in conjunction with the Staff Council Office. The Staff Council Survey assesses staff on a variety of dimensions (sample topics include: which benefits are most valuable to them; their awareness of Staff Council and available mechanisms for reporting issues; their satisfaction with their work-life balance; and the timeliness of performance reviews they have received). A question explicitly addressing employee satisfaction (“Are you satisfied with your job?”) will be added to future iterations of the survey beginning in 2017, although many staff already choose to address job satisfaction in one of the open-response questions throughout the survey. Please see the attachment for the full text of all survey questions. Because Staff Council is primarily a governance body concerned with non-represented staff (represented staff do not participate at the request of their union), the survey is distributed only to the university’s approximately 1,900 non-represented staff members, or slightly over half of the institution’s total employees. Response rates from the Staff Council Survey are consistently high, with over 50% of eligible staff participating in the 2016 iteration of the survey. While the survey itself is anonymous, staff members self-report their affiliations as being representative of a majority of units in the University community and a wide variety of position classifications, both supervisory and nonsupervisory. Other Reporting Mechanisms While the results of the Staff Council Survey are vital to driving the work and focus of the Staff Council, the Staff Council Office also continually collects information about issues important to all university employees. One of these additional mechanisms is the “Staff Connect” form, which allows for anonymous submission of information to the Staff Council Office. While only non-represented staff may participate in the Staff Council Survey, all staff may submit Staff Connect forms including faculty and represented staff. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis by the Staff Council Administrator and fielded to the Council, appropriate committee, or administrative department as necessary for resolution. The Staff Council Office also facilitates periodic forums and focus groups. Forums are open to all and attendees are invited to make their voices heard - most recently, on the topic of employee wellness in spring 2016. Focus groups are open only to a randomly generated representative sample of staff members who are invited to participate in discussions on topics such as post-retirement benefits.

The Staff Council itself, as well as its four standing committees and numerous subcommittees, functions as a mechanism for addressing issues raised by University of Vermont employees. For the purposes of the survey, following the closure of the three-week survey period, quantitative data is analyzed in the Office of Institutional Research, while qualitative data analysis is performed by the Outreach Committee and coordinated by the Staff Council Administrator, a trained data analyst. A summary of the data is submitted to administration following completion of these analyses. In addition, the Council utilizes the data for formulating a two-year work plan. After survey data is collated and examined, commonly raised or requested issues are assigned to committees for investigation and, if necessary, action. Some issues are quickly resolved, while others result in long-term projects to improve employees’ working life. For example, following the analysis of 2014 survey data, Staff Council discovered that a majority of staff at UVM were not receiving regular performance evaluations. This concern was fielded to the Personal and Professional Development Committee, who formed a working group to assess the issue at UVM as well as best practices for performance reviews at other institutions of higher education and surrounding employers. This working group submitted a recommendation to University leadership which resulted, after a year’s worth of collaborative work, in a completely revised performance management procedure, increased training and support to encourage supervisors to complete performance reviews every year, and a transition to an online-based performance review system.

2016 The year the employee satisfaction and engagement evaluation was last administered UVM has 4034 employees by headcount. Staff council represents 50.3% of the population because Union staff are not included. Therefore 2029 staff members are represented by staff council. 45.3% response rate from staff council members. That translates to 919 responses. These responses were deemed not representative by institutional research. 919÷4043 = 22.73%