A process for collecting employee thinking on what needs to be done. In recent years, many organizations, from large, multi-national corporations to non-profits and academic institutions have increasingly used employee surveys to help determine employee attitudes about the workplace.

Loyola University Chicago has undergone dramatic change in the past few years. We’ve experienced record enrollment, completed major renovations on campus and begun several new ones. This is a good time for us to establish a base-line from which to assess our future performance.

All full-time faculty and full and part-time staff members were invited to participate. The cut-off date for adding new employees to the survey’s distribution list was August 27, 2007. Therefore, anyone that was hired after this date did not receive a survey.

Lake Shore, Water Tower, Rome and Niehoff School of Nursing faculty and staff members were invited to participate in the survey. Most Loyolans completed the survey on-line between September 10 and September 30, 2007. Paper surveys were provided for staff members that did not have access to computers.

Confidentiality was maintained in two ways. One, ISR-Towers Perrin, the vendor that helped manage the survey project, delivered the survey electronically to the majority of the respondents. Their server also stores the survey results. No one at Loyola, has access to the individual survey responses.

A second measure of confidentiality is provided through the reporting process. A minimum of 10 responses is required before a school/division will receive a report of the data from their area. And, a minimum of 20 comments were required before a comments report would be generated for any particular area. All comments have been “scrubbed”, (identifying information has been deleted), prior to comment reports being generated. In this way, confidentiality for respondents has been maintained.

Yes, the survey will be conducted every two years.

From a broad perspective, senior leadership will continue to review the data and work with the human resources department to plan and implement University-wide initiatives.

Each school/division has designated a planning coordinator,that is responsible for reviewing their area’s specific data and analyzing the results. In the coming weeks, your area’s planning coordinator and senior leader will give you an overview of your division/school’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.

The planning coordinator and senior leader for your area are responsible for creating and implementing an action plan to address the unique needs of your school/division. Every six months, progress reports will be submitted to the human resources department and senior leadership. Each area is expected to use the survey’s findings to create or enhance their work environment so that the survey that will be conducted two years from now shows improvement.

Each Loyolan should keep two points in mind. The first point is that Loyola University Chicago, cares about creating and maintaining a work environment where the unique talents and perspectives of each person are valued and contribute to the mission. The faculty and staff opinion survey is one tool that will be used to help determine how well we are achieving that goal.

The second point to remember is that each one of us can use the information from the survey to make a difference in Loyola’s future. While the survey revealed there are many things to celebrate there are also areas for improvement --where each one of us can make a difference. From volunteering to work with your area’s planning coordinator to helping improve co-operation across departments, each one of us can make Loyola an even better place to work.