A follow-up survey on staff engagement — how people feel about working at UC — is scheduled for distribution next week to a random sample of nonrepresented employees around the UC system.

The Council of University of California Staff Assemblies, or CUCSA, developed the survey in collaboration with Employee Relations at the UC Office of the President, and with Towers Watson, a national company specializing in work force opinion research.

The engagement survey aims to help UC better understand the views, experiences and needs of nonrepresented staff on topics related to working for UC, including career development, performance management and work place collaboration.

The survey is completely confidential; individual responses and personal identifying information will not be shared with UC.

Union-represented employees are not involved, because UC receives their feedback through the collective bargaining process.

A similar survey went to a random sample of nonrepresented staff in 2012. Read more about the 2012 survey, including the results.

The data from UC Davis led to a number of initiatives in the areas of campuswide communications, career development and workload.

“Having an engaged work force is very important to the success of our campus,” Susan Gilbert, associate vice chancellor who leads HR on the Davis and Sacramento campuses, said in an email to Dateline UC Davis. “As a result of the 2012 survey, HR and Staff Assembly have co-developed programs and strengthened our partnerships.”

In a March 23 memo to nonrepresented staff, Gilbert and Davis campus Staff Assembly Chair Lina Layiktez gave these examples of progress:

• Breakfast with the Chancellor — Monthly event gives staff the opportunity to meet with Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to discuss topics of importance to staff, in an informal and relaxed setting. 
• Administrative Officers for the Future — This program, now in its second year, strives to cultivate a diverse pool of highly talented and motivated staff interested in pursuing administrative officer positions.
• Enhancements to supervisor training programs — To ensure consistency across the Davis and Sacramento campuses in notifying employees of development opportunities, and to emphasize diversity and inclusion.
• Communications — Focus groups (Davis and Sacramento campus staff combined) have been established to discuss this topic, and to generate recommendations that the chancellor and other campus leaders can consider to improve communications at UC Davis.
• Career Development Resource Showcase — To be held next Tuesday, March 31, on the Davis campus, to assist staff in career advancement at UC Davis. Read more about the showcase.

Now, “we need your help again,” Gilbert and Layiktez wrote, hoping for good response to the follow-up survey. “If you are one of the randomly selected staff for the 2015 survey, please take the time to complete it. Your feedback will help us better gauge whether our combined efforts have positively affected areas for improvement noted in the 2012 survey, and identify additional areas for improvement.”

Support from the top

Rob Kerner, chair of CUCSA and former chair of Davis campus Staff Assembly, said improved staff engagement has support at the highest levels of UC.

“We discussed the follow-up survey with President (Janet) Napolitano last Friday, and she was very interested in the results and our ability to compare it to the 2012 CUCSA engagement survey/

“Support for this kind of work from the top is crucial, and I feel we have that from the president and from our UC Davis chancellor and chief human resources officer.”

About 20,000 of UC’s roughly 50,000 nonrepresented staff will be invited to take the survey. The invites will come by email next week from Towers Watson. (Head’s up: It’s not spam!)

“Managers and supervisors have been asked to make the survey a priority for their employees,” Gilbert told Dateline UC Davis. “If you receive an invitation to take the 2015 engagement survey, you are encouraged to take the 15 minutes and respond.

“This is a systemwide survey and we want UC Davis to have the highest response rate across all campuses.” 

Questions about the survey should be directed to Towers Watson: UCEngagementSurvey@towerswatson.com.

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