Qualitative results from the ModernThink survey revealed that a lack in effective communication has led to employee dissatisfaction.
Many of Ohio University's employees are dissatisfied with senior leadership and staff relations, according to the qualitative results of a campus survey conducted in spring 2014.
Spearheaded by the provost’s office, the ModernThink 2014 Great Colleges Survey asked OU employees if they agreed with several statements pertaining to the university's work environment.
A Dec. 9 meeting with a representative from ModernThink, a Delaware-based management consulting firm, revealed that the university has several “areas of concern that need to be addressed,” according to a university news release.
“Some of the issues that the survey revealed are about the campus culture and those are difficult issues to address,” said Beth Quitslund, Faculty Senate chair and a member of the Work Climate Task Force.
Favorable areas from the survey include job satisfaction and support, pride in OU’s mission and quality of supervisors and chairs.
Staff relations, senior leadership and shared governance were among the lowest scoring areas.
Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit identified a need for improved communication as a “common thread within the lowest scoring areas.”
President Roderick McDavis and Benoit formed the Work Climate Task Force in order to address problems identified in the survey.
The task force will have weekly, three-hour meetings for the rest of Spring Semester in order to discuss strategies.
“The communications coming out of that task force are going to be carefully constructed,” Quitslund said. “Part of what’s sensitive about the task force is we have to grapple with areas of real discontent and there’s going to be differences of opinion of how to handle it.”
Quantitative results from the survey were received in October 2014.
Employees showed increased rates of disagreement with statements such as “promotions in my department are based on a person's ability” and “there's a sense that we're all on the same team at this institution.”
About 800 other institutions around the country have participated in similar surveys, according to previous Post articles.
“There are things people are concerned about and now they have a voice they didn’t have before,” said Valerie Young, department chair and associate professor of chemical engineering, and a co-chair of the senate task force, in a previous Post interview.
“I think that we would have a kind of healthier campus ethos and campus community if we were able to speak more frankly,” Quitslund said.
