February 8, 2021: Introduction to the Employee Engagement Survey
Dear Colleagues,
As we continue our progress to achieve the goals as stated in our University Strategic Plan, we also remain dedicated to building an engaged and inspiring work environment at Georgia Southern. As the President shared on February 3, 2021, as part of this work, we will be gathering employee input annually through an Employee Engagement survey. Our goal is to foster an environment where every individual knows and owns their role and responsibility in achieving the strategic direction of Georgia Southern.
This spring, March 1 – 15, the survey will be administered for the first time. All full-time, benefitted employees who were employed at Georgia Southern prior to December 1, 2020, are eligible to participate and will be sent a personal email invitation to do so. The purpose of the survey is to provide all employees an opportunity to share feedback that will help supervisors and Georgia Southern leadership ensure that Georgia Southern fosters a workplace environment where employees feel engaged and valued. Our leaders will use the feedback to hold conversations with employees focusing on improvement and outlining ways to improve in the highest priority areas.
To maintain absolute assurance in the confidentiality of the Employee Engagement survey, Studer Education will be administering the survey, managing the data collection, and aggregating the data to provide results reports to leaders. We are using Studer Education as our partner because we simply want to make sure that all employees feel as secure as possible expressing their opinions and written comments.
The categories on the survey include:
· Engagement and Opportunities
· Alignment (Values, Mission, and Pillars)
· Environment
· Communication
· Leadership (aligned to the Academic Affairs divisional reporting structure)
· Supervisor leadership (Chair or Director)
· Institutional leadership (Dean)
· Divisional leadership (Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)
· Presidential leadership
· Culture
· Summary Items
· Open-ended items for employees to provide comments
If there are questions about the survey questions, how the information on our organizational structure is prepared before the survey is administered, or how the reports are prepared after the survey closes, you can direct those to Dr. Helen Bland (hwbland@georgiasouthern.edu) and Ava Edwards (avapercell@georgiasouthern.edu).
Please take note of key dates below:
| Campus Informational Sessions hosted by University Strategic Planning Committees | Through Feb 26 |
| Survey Administration – Email Invitation sent to employees | March 1 – 15 |
| Dr. Marrero delivers Information Session to rollout institution results | TBD before April 15 |
| Virtual training sessions for leaders to support unit results rollout | April 1-15 |
| Survey results received by Leaders | April 16 |
| Divisional leadership roll out survey results to divisions | By 4/23 |
| Institutional and Supervisor level leadership roll out survey results | By 4/30 |
| Divisional, institutional, and supervisor level leadership meet with faculty and/or staff to develop action plan | May 1 – May 15 |
| Institutional and supervisor level leadership submit action plans from survey to their respective divisional leaders | By May 31 |
I invite you to complete the survey and to encourage colleagues within our division to participate as well. Feedback on the survey will support our vision of becoming the best place to work, learn, and grow.
Sincerely,
Carl L. Reiber, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Last updated: 8/13/2021