A survey measuring the work environment at Ohio University revealed that top administrators are by far the most satisfied group of employees at the institution.
Top administrators are more satisfied than all other Ohio University employee groups, according to a survey about working at the Athens campus.
The ModernThink Climate survey, conducted last Spring Semester, asked employees if they agreed with various statements about OU’s work environment. Some faculty members overwhelmingly disagreed with some of the statements.
The following had 25 percent or more faculty members disagreeing with them:
- I am paid fairly for my work.
- Senior leadership provides a clear direction for this institution’s future.
- Senior leadership shows a genuine interest in the well-being of faculty, administration and staff.
- Faculty, administration and staff are meaningfully involved in institutional planning.
- I believe what I am told by senior leadership.
- This institution is well run.
- There’s a sense that we’re all on the same team at this institution.
- I expect that action will be taken based on the results of this survey.
But, top administrators overall agreed with the same statements, among many others.
Top administrators, faculty, other administrators, classified staff and adjunct faculty members participated in the survey — nearly 54 percent of whom provided responses.
It was considered a strong response rate by many OU officials.
The disparity might be a result of the size of the respective groups at OU, said Howard Dewald, associate provost for Faculty and Academic Planning.
Nearly 700 faculty members responded to various questions on the survey, while only about 45 top administrators were involved.
“It’s a smaller group than the faculty group, so (their level of satisfaction) may not be too surprising,” Dewald said.
A Faculty Senate committee, called the Work Climate Task Force, is hoping to change OU’s work environment after seeing the survey’s results.
“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. “One of the things we learned initially from talking to ModernThink is whenever you embark on something like this … you see problems.”
Those that conducted the ModernThink survey are coming to campus on Nov. 18 to discuss the survey’s results. The same survey has been conducted at nearly 800 universities.
One of the questions with the highest rate of disagreement addressed whether action would be taken as a result of the survey — a question that was specifically added by the task force.
Nearly 40 percent of the nearly 1,900 employees that responded to that question either felt they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement.
“The fact that the data has been released, the task force has been put together … there is a real expectation and a real goal to report back out what the survey said and see what types of things could be changed to make (OU) a better place,” Dewald said.
Beth Quitslund, chair of Faculty Senate and associate professor of English, said that a real analysis of the data can not be performed until the written-in comments are received.
“I really want to see the thematic analysis of the qualitative data before I feel like I have any handle on anything,” Quitslund said.
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