Western employees are building more resourceful, resilient teams in the face of internal and external challenges – and that kind of response bodes well for a university facing the same uncertain future as all other public-sector institutions, according to organizers of a recent survey of campus work culture.
“Postsecondary education is going through difficult times, as has been the case for multiple years now. That is reality, and it is unlikely to change. Government constraints are going to be around for a long time,” said John Yardley, President of Metrics@Work, the company that conducted the university’s We Speak survey in 2012 and 2017. “But there are opportunities on the human side of what we do, in spite of constraints.
“Some of the things we do are not dictated by dollars – some are, yes, but not all. Most of what we measure, however, speaks to the way people interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.”
Overall, the We Speak survey showed Western community members with higher-than-average engagement with the university and their particular faculty/department/division. The numbers topped comparisons to both overall organizational and postsecondary-specific databases of hundreds of institutions measured by Metrics@Work.
Much of that employee confidence was driven by staff members, who showed record-shattering engagement with the university, topping all measured organizations. Staffers were less engaged with their faculty/department/division, with a number slightly below database averages, but the number was still quite strong overall.
Faculty members flipped that equation, however, by showing lower engagement with the university than with their faculty/department/division. Faculty still bested the postsecondary-specific average for university engagement, and fell just short of doing so in faculty/department/division engagement.
Western’s overall survey score – called the Grand Driver Average – grew survey over survey. That is an excellent sign for the university, Yardley said.
“Because there were five years between the surveys – and a lot has gone on for you and your sector – this is a positive thing and a trend you want to continue,” he said.
When comparing Western numbers from 2012 to those released today, the areas that saw the most survey-over-survey growth focused exclusively on what the survey called ‘work area,’ defined as the space closest to the employee (i.e. your faculty/department/division). All 10 of the Top 10 categories with the most growth related to this area.
Western employees said they were happy with recognition; performance management; support for improvement/innovation; change management; support for diversity; collaboration; communication; decision-making; and leadership within their teams. They also saw strong collaboration between their team and others.
“These are the things that are close to people. That is important,” Yardey said. “If you are being bombarded by decisions from outside that cause your senior leaders to make decisions that sometimes land in a hard way, the reality is, there has been strengthening inside your work area. That is what you want to see inside an organization. It creates organizational resilience; it creates team resilience. It is an important thing because it allows a team to persist, in spite of things that get in their way. And persistence is how we win marathons.”
On the flip side, the largest survey-over-survey shortfalls occurred at the ‘organizational level,’ defined as the institutional level of the university. All five of the bottom five categories related to this area.
Western employees saw room for improvement for support for diversity; career advancement/hiring practices; communication; faculty/division leadership; and senior leadership at the institutional level.
“This is not a good sign; this needs to be reversed,” Yardley said.
While the presidential compensation controversy may have been top of mind for some, the time between the two surveys saw its share of challenges across the sector, from questions about the value of a university degree in mainstream media, to increased government funding pressures.
“I am not trying to externalize all of your issues – that is not the right thing to do. But it is important to understand that some of those things are external,” Yardley said. “That is where the big impacts often come into a university – the big factors that then cause decision-makers to have to make change.”
While the issues surrounding the president’s pay drew the largest headlines, Yardley warned it is important to understand critiques of leadership go beyond one individual.
“Leadership is a process; leadership is not a person. And it is not necessarily the person given the title of leader,” he said. “This is a very, very confounded process that gets mixed up with individual people. And in the name of finding a causal reason, we end up pointing the finger. This notion of leadership is a shared process.”
Yardley stressed leaders need to look at their own areas for ways to address these findings.
“Where we see high scores, we know people are working well together, they are trying to do things to meet the demands of their work. As a result, they should be celebrated. But at the same time, there is a lot of variation within the university. We see some lower results. Because those are not necessarily dictated by budgets, it is important we pause and think about what we could do in those areas.
“That is not about railing against the administration or the government – naming, blaming and shaming is no good at all. That is about what you can do on a local basis. There is lots of room to do that.”
These high-level findings have value, however they do not see into every corner of the institution, Yardley said. “These results reflect the broad picture. They won’t reflect everyone’s lived experience,” he explained. “It is important for people to hear and see results that are more connected to their units.
“The appeal from me to the university is for individual units to take responsibility for the things they can change. If they can do that, and do it well, Western will keep on getting stronger. It doesn’t mean you won’t have problems, something is always going to happen, but the key is having the ability to manage through that.”
Response rates across the campus were up survey over survey. Staff response rate of 78.9 per cent was up 4.2 per cent over 2012; faculty response rate of 44.4 per cent was up 13.1 per cent over 2012. Response rates were higher among full-time employees versus part-time employees in both categories.
“Response rates went up. That is really important when considering the reliability of the results. The appeal of a higher response rate is people can say these results are based on a strong majority of our people responding,” Yardley said.
As for next steps, the Western president and vice-presidents will be reviewing the overall results in the coming months and consulting with leaders and employee groups to determine what actions to best take at a university wide level, said Jane O’Brien, Associate Vice-President (Human Resources). Deans and associate vice-presidents are now meeting with Yardley to better understand faculty and division results. Leaders will be sharing local faculty/department/division results over the coming weeks and will engage faculty and staff in determining next steps at a local level.