Dear Colleagues,
UC Systemwide Staff Engagement Survey results are in! The great news is that UC Berkeley continues to improve as a place to work for its staff:
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96% - believe strongly in the teaching, research and public service mission of the UC system.
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87% - have a work schedule that allows sufficient flexibility to meet their personal/family needs.
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77% - say they can be themselves at work without worrying about how they will be accepted.
These are huge strides to make in a little over two years, but we’re still not where we want to be. As you can see when you review the survey, we’re still below the UC average and well below national averages when it comes to employee engagement. For example, there are several areas where we still have plenty of room for growth:
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23% - do not feel that they can be themselves at work.
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29% - would not recommend the UC System as a good place to work.
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31% - do not believe that management supports equal opportunity.
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43% - are seriously considering leaving the UC system.
Other findings from the survey reveal less favorable engagement in the following populations:
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Individual contributors score about 3% lower than everyone else.
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Women and People of color, especially our African-American and LatinX colleagues, generally experience a less “favorable” version of Berkeley as well.
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Our newest employees with 1 to 3 years of experience are the most engaged, and scored well above our average, whereas those with 5 to 10 years of experience scored much lower than average in nearly every category.
The full results of the survey can be accessed on our HR website, and we’ve made a short video highlighting these results and what we’re doing to address them.
Want to know more?To better understand the findings, and importantly, begin developing action plans, we’ll again be hosting a series of “engagement survey deep dives” with departments, units and staff organizations to gather feedback and ideas for improvement. We can also help you strategize ways to create and implement your own unit's engagement plan as well. If you would like to meet with us for such a session, please contact James Dudek, our Employee Engagement Lead, at jdudek@berkeley.edu. Note, we’re focusing on cross-UCB orgs because the results of this survey are not broken out by department or unit.
Finally, I want to thank those of you who had the opportunity to take the 2019 survey that is developed by the Council of University of California Staff Assemblies (CUCSA) in collaboration with Systemwide Human Resources’ Employee Relations department and Willis Towers Watson. We appreciate you taking the time to tell us what you think and are committed to acting on your feedback. We use the Staff Engagement Survey feedback to improve how we engage staff and to set our priorities. Your input is critical in helping us to make Berkeley a great employer.
Eugene
Eugene Whitlock, AVC-HR
If you are a manager who supervises UC Berkeley employees without email access, please circulate this information to all.
