Yale University
PA-13: Assessing Employee Satisfaction

Yale's method for evaluating employee satisfaction is to conduct the Workplace Survey every two years. This process began in 2004, with a pilot run of the assessment tool and has been administered for the past 10 years, with a full launch in 2005, followed by survey administration in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. The next survey will be administered later this year, 2016. Our survey methodology includes the following:

o Hosting of survey data is managed off-site, by an external survey company. All data is confidential and anonymous. In the case of Yale, Sirta Survey Intelligence is the survey administrator.
o Survey data is made available to Yale Management via an Overall University view, and by unit views. Note, unit views are only available for units where the participation level reaches or exceeds 10. For units were the participation levels is below 10, the data rolls up to the highest unit in the organizational hierarchy.
o A single survey comprised of 50 Core Items; 48 scaled items and 2 open ended questions. Additionally, divisions are offered an opportunity to create up to 6 division specific items to be added to the survey, which has resulted in 56 items per division overall.
o Survey Items comprise 11 dimensions: Rewards, Commitment, Diversity, Team Building, Innovation, Development, Communication, Performance Management, Decision Making, and Productivity.
o Surveys are administered in two formats: online questionnaire and paper survey questionnaire. Paper surveys are made available to staff populations that do not use computers on a regular basis. Completed paper surveys are mailed to the host organization for data entry and analysis.
o The 2014 Yale survey is an open survey. An open survey, means that participants; staff and faculty are invited to complete the survey via a single user link. No individual/unique log in is made available, which allows for anonymity and confidentiality. The ability to track to an individual users is not available.
o Data is made available post survey close in the form of electronic sortable reports. Reports can be sorted by all dimensions, provided the minimum participation of 10 is met. Dimension categories include: Age, Race, Military Status, Job Classification, Gender, Disability, Sexual Orientation, Supervisory Capacity, Tenure, and Location.

The University uses two methods to address issues raised in each of the workplace surveys, we refer to this method as Action Planning. Action Planning is expected to occur both at the University and the departmental/unit/school level. The Senior Leadership of the University will review the overall results at the University level, and will determine overall institutional initiatives and programs to address overall issues. At the departmental/unit/school level, each leader is provide their results will create an departmental/unit/school level Action Plan. Action Plans take on two formats: areas to approve and areas to celebrate. Action Plans are communicated throughout the institution and at departmental/unit/school level. Tracking of each departments Action Plan is handled centrally. Leaders are expected to enter their departmental plan into the Action Tracker Online tool.

For this credit, we are following AASHE's COVID-19 guidelines (https://stars.aashe.org/resources-support/help-center/using-the-reporting-tool/stars-reporting-and-covid-19/), as Yale intended to conduct an updated assessment of employee satisfaction for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, but were unable to due to the pandemic. However, we will resume this assessment for the 2023 fiscal year. The assessment being reported was conducted within the previous six years (2019), and the methodology is appropriate for STARS v. 2.2.