Jeffco Public Schools

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey

Report of Results June 2016

Prepared by:

2955 Valmont Road, Suite 300 Boulder, CO 80531 n-r- | 303-444-7863

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 1 Survey Background .................................................................................................................................... 4

Survey Results............................................................................................................................................ 5 An Overview ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Comparisons by Employee Subgroups ............................................................................................................ 6 Engagement....................................................................................................................................................... 7 Essentials........................................................................................................................................................... 9 Growth.............................................................................................................................................................. 11 Climate ............................................................................................................................................................. 13 Effectiveness ................................................................................................................................................... 17 Drivers of Employee Satisfaction ................................................................................................................... 22 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................................... 23

Appendix A: Respondent Characteristics ...............................................................................................24 Appendix B: Complete Set of Survey Responses...................................................................................27 Appendix C: Survey Results Compared by Respondent Characteristics ..............................................39

Appendix D: Comparison of Survey Responses: 2016 to 2010 ...........................................................79

Appendix E: Benchmark Comparisons ...................................................................................................81 Appendix F: Survey Methodology ............................................................................................................86

Appendix G: Survey Instrument...............................................................................................................94

Report of Results

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Executive Summary

Survey Background and Methods

The Jeffco Employee Survey provides a snapshot of the opinions of employees regarding their job satisfaction and other key characteristics of a quality work environment. Jeffco Public Schools (Jeffco) has administered an employee survey six times between 2000 and 2010, typically every two years. After a five-year lapse, district leadership decided to reinitiate and renovate the employee survey to better assess employee engagement and find actionable ways to improve district culture. For the 2015-2016 survey, the instrument and methods were revised to reflect changes in educational climate, district goals and technology. The 2016 survey serves as a new baseline for Jeffco and captured employees' opinions within five aspects of the organization: employee engagement, essentials (e.g., resources, compensation and workload), employee development and growth, climate and effectiveness. This survey served as a needs assessment for the district, helping to find both strengths and challenges. Comparisons to 2010 survey data were made when applicable.

The survey was administered online between April 18th and May 8th. A total of 5,666 completed surveys were obtained, providing an overall response rate of 56%.

Organizational Strengths

This baseline survey found many areas of organizational culture and performance where a high proportion of employees gave positive ratings.

Employee Engagement: Overall, employees at Jeffco are engaged. Job satisfaction is high and most staff members are committed to a career in the district. By and large, employees felt positively challenged in their jobs and were given opportunities to use their most valuable skills.

Job-related Resources: Employees were generally positive about the resources and technology provided as well as the physical work spaces in the district. Employees felt safe at work.

Employee Development: Employees felt supported in their buildings and gave favorable ratings to the professional learning opportunities offered. Most felt the training they received led to improvements in job performance.

Building Level Climates: Climate ratings at the building level were generally positive. A majority of employees reported atmospheres of communication, collaboration, shared decision-making, innovation and autonomy.

Performance: Employees felt Jeffco had high expectations, committed workers and employees who provided quality work. Educators believed their schools to be making substantial progress in the areas of student achievement and closing the achievement gap.

Safety: Jeffco schools were felt to be safe places for students. Educators felt bullying was actively prevented by both adults and students.

Partnerships: Employees gave positive ratings to the partnership between the school district and the broader Jefferson County community.

School Board: The ratings given to the Jeffco's board increased substantially from 2010.

Areas for Organizational Growth

The primary goal of an employee survey is organizational learning. Areas where Jeffco could work to improve organizational structures, culture or performance include:

Report of Results

Page 1

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Compensation: Like other public sector employees, most Jeffco employees rated their benefits somewhat positively but their compensation low. Ratings of compensation and benefits have decreased since the 2010 survey.

Perceptions of leadership: Jeffco has experienced significant changes in leadership over the past three years. Change is always difficult, particularly when the transitions have been paired with politics, negative publicity and controversy. Although the School Board received high ratings, the Superintendent and senior management were not rated as favorably.

Perceptions of the larger organization: Although it is common in large organizations for employees to rate the climate and quality of work in their own buildings more positively than the larger organization, the differences between the two were sizable in Jeffco.

District climate: The areas in both building and District organizational level climate receiving the lowest ratings were in the areas of shared decision-making, innovation and managing change.

Drivers of Employee Satisfaction

Knowing where to focus resources to improve employees' satisfaction with the workplace requires information that targets job features that are most important to employees. The approximately 100 questions asked on the survey were synthesized into 15 factors or indices within the larger categories of engagement, essentials, growth, climate and effectiveness. In the figure on the following page, the average score for each of the survey dimensions or factors are color-coded. The color of each box presents the average percent of employees providing positive ratings (e.g., the percent excellent or good, or the percent strongly or somewhat agree) for each dimension (the average across all individual ratings given to each aspect included in that specific job feature).

In addition to the color coded comparison for each dimension, a key driver analysis was conducted to assess which of the employment dimensions were most closely correlated with job satisfaction. The image below includes stars to indicate which job features were found to be the most influential on ratings of employee job satisfaction. Dimensions most closely related to job satisfaction were employee contribution and fit, building leadership, performance evaluation and District climate.

Report of Results

Page 2

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Legend More than 75% of Jeffco employees rated positively Between 61%-75% of Jeffco employees rated positively Fewer than 61% of Jeffco employees rated positively

Most influential on overall job satisfaction

Performance Evaluation

Safety

Student Performance

Resources Compensation

Leadership

Diversity

Building Climate

Employee contribution

and Fit

Workload

Safe Schools

Employee Development

Organizational Effectiveness

Community Partnerships

District Climate

Comparisons by Employee Characteristics

When looking at the survey results by various job characteristics, those who were not educators and those who worked at Jeffco for a shorter period of time were more positive. Those working with primary grades tended to give more positive ratings to most aspects of working at Jeffco.

Comparison to National Benchmarks

A number of the questions used on the 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey were similar to other normed employee questionnaires. By and large, Jeffco responses were similar to responses given by other local government employees and employees from myriad private organizations. For the few comparisons available to other teachers in Colorado, Jeffco's ratings varied, with some higher and some lower than the comparisons.

Conclusions

The overall results of the 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey were positive. Of the approximately 100 questions asked on the survey, only 13 questions did not receive a majority of positive responses. Employees were generally satisfied with their jobs and most planned on working for Jeffco in years to come.

However, the largest concerns identified were in the areas of compensation, formal performance evaluation systems, and the need to build and strengthen the relationship of the Superintendent and senior management with the broader workforce.

Report of Results

Page 3

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Survey Background

Introduction

The 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey provides the opinions of employees regarding their satisfaction on the job and other key characteristics of a quality work environment: communication, organizational ethics, employee fit, wages and benefits, the physical work space, supervisory relationships, the performance evaluation system, professional development and self-reported performance. A quality work environment is a workplace that is not simply acceptable, but that is desirable. It is not only where people do work, but where they want to work.

Great workplaces are partnerships of employees, management and the residents they serve. The 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey captured employees' opinions within five aspects of the organization: employee engagement, essentials (e.g., resources, compensation and workload), employee development and growth, climate and effectiveness. The survey served as a needs assessment for Jeffco helping to find both strengths and challenges.

Survey Methods

Jeffco has administered an employee survey six times between 2000 and 2010, typically every two years. After a five-year lapse, district leadership decided to reinitiate and renovate the employee survey to better assess employee engagement and find actionable ways to improve district culture. For the 20152016 survey, the instrument and methods were revised to reflect changes in educational climate, district goals and technology. Jeffco contracted with National Research Center, Inc. (NRC) to develop and administer the new survey. As part of the instrument design process, an employee work group was formed. The Jeffco Advisory Committee (ESAC), an advisory group that included representatives from each classification of employees and schools as well as centrally based employees, worked with NRC to create a new instrument to measure the key characteristics of a work environment.

The survey was administered online April 18th through May 8th. NRC sent four separate email invitations to employees. Jeffco augmented the invitations with a variety of outreach activities to encourage employees to take the survey. Of the approximately 10,089 employees presumed to have received a survey, 5,666 completed the survey, providing a response rate of 56%. (Response rates by employee subgroups can be found in Appendix F: Survey Methodology.)

It is customary to describe the precision of estimates made from surveys by a "level of confidence" and accompanying "confidence interval" (or margin of error). Because the 2016 survey was intended to be taken by all employees and no statistical weighting was performed, no traditional margin of error was calculated1. The full description of methods used to garner these opinions can be found in Appendix F: Survey Methodology. Responses from the 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey are compared to the 2010 data when applicable in Appendix D: Comparison of Survey Responses: 2016 to 2010 and to state and national benchmark data in Appendix E: Benchmark Comparisons.

A periodic sounding of employee opinion on critical work climate issues offers management a continuous opportunity to make improvements in the organization. The ESAC has decided to administer this survey every two years.

1 Margins of error are calculated to account for sampling error (the uncertainty from using a selected sample to estimate the sentiment of the entire population). Because the 2016 Jeffco Employee Survey was intended to be a census, no sampling error is calculated. Potential non-response bias (occurring when response rates fall below 100% because some employees chose not to participate) can be more concerning than sampling error. However, examination of the demographics of employee survey respondents compared to non-respondents demonstrated no meaningful difference between the categories of employees who participated compared to those who did not. The lack of difference suggests little non-response bias.

Report of Results

Page 4

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Survey Results

An Overview

Employees were asked about approximately 100 different aspects of the organization. These questions were grouped into five larger dimensions or factors (bolded in the figure below) as well as 16 smaller dimensions. The average rating for each dimension is provided to demonstrate patterns of employee opinion. (See Appendix F: Survey Methodology for information on the individual items within each dimension).

For example, the dimension of Job Satisfaction is the average percent positive (e.g., the percent excellent or good, the percent strongly or somewhat agree, etc.) of six individual questions from the survey:

I see a career for me at Jeffco I plan on working for Jeffco a year from now Overall, I am satisfied with my job How likely or unlikely are you to recommend working for Jeffco to someone who asks? The purpose of Jeffco makes me feel my job is important Overall, I feel positive about working for Jeffco

Employee engagement received the highest ratings of the larger dimensions (82% positive ratings), followed by Effectiveness (74%) and Growth (71%). The lowest rated dimension was Climate (59%). Of the 16 smaller dimensions, the highest scoring areas were Employee Contribution and Fit, Organizational Effectiveness, Safe Schools and Community Partnerships. The lowest rated of the smaller dimensions included Compensation and District Climate.

Larger and Smaller Dimensions Engagement

Job satisfaction Employee contribution and fit Essentials Safety Resources (equipment, technology and physical work spaces) Compensation Workload Growth Employee development Performance evaluation Climate Building climate (communication, decision-making, collaboration, innovation, autonomy in employees' buildings) District climate (communication, decision-making, collaboration, innovation, autonomy for Jeffco as a whole) Diversity (recruiting, retaining and providing equal opportunities for advancement) Effectiveness Leadership Organizational effectiveness Student performance (achievement, competencies) Safe schools Community partnerships

Mean Rating (Percent Positive) 82% 79% 86% 65% 79% 70% 39% 64% 71% 71% 71% 59%

69%

44% 57% 74% 60% 84% 73% 82% 80%

Report of Results

Page 5

Jeffco Public Schools

2016 Employee Survey Report

Comparisons by Employee Subgroups Responses to the 2016 employee survey varied slightly by employee and job characteristics. Generally, employees giving higher ratings to survey questions tended to have worked fewer years at Jeffco overall. They also tended to be administrators, professional or technical employees. Licensed educators tended to provide the lowest ratings overall. Employees working with younger students and in the School Effectiveness department gave the most positive ratings. (See Appendix C: Survey Results Compared by Respondent Characteristics for more information on the comparison of responses by employment and employee characteristics.)

More detail on the dimensions of the employee experience and the individual questions that comprise each are presented in the remainder of this report.

Report of Results

Page 6

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download