Cornell University
PA-10: Assessing Employee Satisfaction

Cornell continuously employs unit or campus–wide surveys to drive improvements to the campus climate to foster a productive work environment for faculty, students and staff, including mature workers. Cornell administers a satisfaction survey for all faculty on a 5 year cycle - the most recent of which was administered in fall, 2010. The university conducted a survey for all staff in the fall of 2011, with another planned in fall, 2016. The student PULSE survey is conducted on a bi-annual basis, with the last conducted in the spring, 2013 and another planned in spring, 2015. In addition to these organization-wide measures, many other measures of satisfaction are in place on an on-going basis. For example, the university exit survey measures reasons why people leave Cornell, a new hire survey measures acclimation to Cornell after 120 days, which includes satisfaction metrics. Many units on campus also conduct "pulse" surveys of their staff, faculty and students on a regular basis.

From the faculty survey a number of areas have been addressed. One area was the academic calendar. Since the survey was conducted a few changes have been made. 1) Labor Day has been listed as a non-instructional day of remembrance. Originally, classes were held on Labor Day while non-academic employees had the day off as a paid holiday. 2) Beginning in 2014, Martin Luther King, Jr. day was observed for all university employees. 3) Fall break has been extended by 2 days to help alleviate stress that students have expressed concern about in the past.