On Oct. 5, all employees at the University of Iowa will receive an email inviting them to click on a personalized link to the Working at Iowa survey. The short, confidential survey can be done as part of their normal duties and will be available until Oct. 19. It asks employees to provide feedback on their experience working for the university.

According to Sue Curry, dean of the College of Public Health, taking the survey is both easy and important.

“It helps us shine a light on our successes and gives us useful and actionable information about possible areas of improvement,” she says. “I think employees can feel good about working in an organization that genuinely wants to know their opinions.”

University Human Resources has conducted the Working at Iowa survey periodically since 2006, and UI leadership and supervisors have used the results to make short-term and long-term improvements to employee work environments.

“To be an excellent institution we must provide an environment where great people can deliver excellent results,” says UI President Bruce Harreld. “This survey is a critical step in learning where we need to focus. I hope everyone takes this opportunity to help.”

Aggregate survey results are made available to the campus community. Each dean or vice president will receive a report for their college or division, and departments and units with 10 or more survey respondents also will receive additional breakout reports. Respondents’ names and individual answers are kept confidential; only the summary data is provided.

In 2014, 83 percent of staff and faculty at the College of Public Health responded to the survey, which was one of the higher response rates on campus. Iowa Now spoke with Curry to find out more about why the survey was so well received and how its results affected her college.

The College of Public Health had a high participation rate in 2014. Why do you think that is? What does the College of Public Health do that might be different than other campus units?

Well, I think that we have a culture of participation in the college. I really want everybody who works here—students, faculty, and staff—to feel that they’re part of the college. Engagement is one of our core values; it’s what we do.

We also are a very research-intensive college; our research is very oriented toward community and individuals and groups, and surveying is part of that. Everybody has an understanding of how important it is to participate for results to be valid. So I think a lot of factors go into it, but foundationally it does reflect our culture, which is one of participation.

Is there anything that you do in particular to cultivate that culture?

I think it’s something you have to pay attention to all the time. It’s organic. We have a staff council, faculty council, student organizations—I visit with all of those at least a couple of times a year. It’s not something that you can make happen in a week when a survey gets released. When you have leadership in those organizations who are selected by their peers, who encourage participation, then it is not totally top down, and it’s more organic.

How did you use the results of the survey two years ago, and what sort of long-term processes were affected or begun because of that?

To me, it’s an ongoing process. The survey complements everything else that we do. We share the results widely through the college, and I think the best way to use it is to empower local units and key parts of the college to digest the results and to act on them. 

I also personally use the results. During reviews of our department heads, I’m very interested in seeing the Working at Iowa results, as well as results from other surveys we do internally. Our internal surveys repeat questions from the Working at Iowa survey so that we can compare trends over time.

But I think it’s really important to think about how it’s not just a survey to change things. It’s a survey to identify what we’re doing well, to feel good about who we are and what we do.

What would you say to unit leaders or supervisors who aren’t exactly sure what to do with the survey results?

I think part of the reason that people don’t know what to do with the results is the feeling that right away they’re supposed to tell what the problems are and how to fix them. And that can be very daunting. So the first thing is: Don’t just focus on areas of improvement. You can give feedback about what’s going well.

And remember that people make up units. So if folks feel valued, if they understand their contributions, it’s not just because of what the leader or supervisor is doing; it’s because of the collective efforts of the unit. If there are areas for improvement, it’s important to move beyond identifying what those areas are to talking about how to work together to make it better. It’s not all on you as a supervisor.

I also would obviously encourage folks to consult with HR leaders in the college if they have questions because we have people with great expertise in how to do this. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring in a consultant or a facilitator.

Some people may be skeptical about the usefulness of the survey or whether it actually will lead to productive changes. What would you say to them?

If there are opportunities for positive change, and there always are—we are not perfect—then we need these kinds of surveys to help us identify those opportunities. You know, you can’t fix what you don’t know needs fixing. If you worked in an organization where everybody thought that this kind of survey was worthless and nobody responded to it, what could the organization do? I would really be concerned if I was working in an organization that didn’t ask for this information.