About six months ago, I provided an update on our results in a 2022 employee engagement pulse survey. I am doing so again with this blog with our most recent results from the bigger 2023 USask employee engagement survey. These surveys provide valuable internal communication about what employees are experiencing that we might not otherwise learn collectively. It supports our ability to improve our work environment. We want to be a great place to work, and while achieving that is no easy thing, it is critical to delivering on our mission, and deserves our attention and focus.

So on to the results of the survey that was conducted earlier this year!

The 2023 employee engagement survey showed that College of Medicine employees’ overall engagement came in at 55% (down from 58% in the pulse survey in 2022), and that of employees across USask came in at 54% (also down from 58%). Beyond that figure, for the CoM, 24% identified as ‘almost engaged,’ 10% of CoM employees identified as ‘indifferent’ and 11% as ‘disengaged’—concerning numbers because we aim to have a workplace where all employees are engaged in what they do. So we know, as was the case six months ago, that we still need to do more to get all employees more fully involved in positive ways that inspire engagement.

Among the survey questions, one was open ended, allowing for more individual thoughts and responses and capturing important themes for our college. For instance, hybrid work options are appreciated, many positive comments about people leaders and recognition that they greatly influence the work environment, and that employees are committed to both their work and their departments. So while we have work to do to improve, we have many strengths and positives on which we can build.

The closed questions in the survey rolled up into the following engagement drivers, with these resulting scores:

College of Medicine Overall Engagement Drivers
(see larger image at EES 2023)

Areas for improvement were identified that include: concerns related to psychological safety in the workplace; lack of onboarding for new staff; lack of leadership training; communication challenges at the department level and at distributed sites, and; high workload issues.

Our college is committed to both leveraging our areas of strength related to employee engagement, and focusing on ways to improve in areas of concern, such as, for example, continuing to explore ways to make our workplace more psychologically safe and inclusive.

Comprehensive results will be shared at the unit level in early fall. Thank you to all who took the time to provide us with this valuable feedback. We continue to work on ways to improve the CoM for all employees.