"What has been and what is the good this organization seeks to protect and promote?" and "What kind of dwelling place results, and what communicative practices does it thereby welcome?" (Communication Ethics Literacy page 151)
I work for the University of Minnesota and for the month of October we were asked several times via email, via snail mail, via announcements in the common areas such as the individual office floor kitchens to fill out the U of M Employee Engagement survey. This survey is created to collect data about employees opinions about their workplace, in depth questions ask you to rank your level of satisfaction with your job, your working relationship with your work team, and your direct supervisors. The feeling amongst my coworkers ranged from apathy "Nothing changed after we filled out the last survey." to interest, "I am going to share my ideas in the end portion where you have free space to write things down." to suspicion, "They say it's anonymous, but is it REALLY anonymous?"
So how do you ask for 25,000 people's opinions on their workplace? Each of the campuses has their own set of students, campus climate and location. Each student goes to the school for their own personal reasons and each employee works their for their own personal reasons.
In my opinion the survey does work to see the outlying trends and concerns, if you have a personal problem with your manager, the survey probably won't help that, but if multiple people respond with the same concerns, something could be done.
In my office 94% of us completed the survey, the highest level of participation in recent years, I should add however that we were given the incentive that if 75% of us completed it, we would get a 1/2 day of work on the day before Thanksgiving. My workplace is seeking to promote happiness in its dwelling place I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment