Take the Employee Engagement Survey by January 25th!

As many of you already know, UMass Memorial is rolling out another wave of Employee Engagement surveys to over 3,800 staff, including many SHARE members. If you are in an area that is being surveyed, SHARE encourages your participation. It shouldn't take much more than five minutes, you can do it on work time, and we are hopeful that the results will direct attention at improving what it feels like to come to work here every day.

Last year, a smaller number of departments were administered a similar survey; these departments will be re-surveyed to check on their progress.  In addition, several dozen other departments are being asked to participate.

Like the other Employee Engagement surveys administered since 2014, these will be handled by an outside agency called Avatar Solutions. The surveys will not be seen by anyone at UMass Memorial. Prior to this new approach, SHARE members sometimes encountered problems with how their information was handled--sometimes the results were reported in such a way that managers and supervisors could figure out respondents' identities. It appears that the measures involved now are working; SHARE has heard no complaints about confidentiality. Avatar Solutions will give UMass Memorial results for groups only, not individuals. Small groups will be combined to help protect anonymity. You have to enter your employee ID number to take the survey -- that's to make sure only employees take the survey, that each person only takes it once, and that your responses are grouped with your team’s responses.

If you are in a department taking part in the survey, you can expect that results will be shared with you in March, that measures will be put in place over the Spring and Summer with the goal of improving what it feels like to work here, and that your department will then be re-surveyed in October to measure whether improvements made between surveys have worked. SHARE leadership will also study these results to better understand ways that our union can improve our members' experience at work.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this survey, or SHARE's participation with it, email will.erickson@theshareunion.org.