TYC EMPLOYEE UPDATE

Survev results tallied

Survey of Organizational Excellence indicates employee satisfaction rising

Every two years, TYC and many other state agencies participate in the Survey of Organizational Excellence, a comprehensive look at employee opinions about job satisfaction and agency performance. The Survey is administered by the University of Texas at Austin. UT processes the completed forms, tabulates the results, and protects the anonymity of respondents. This year, TYC's response rate increased from 29% in the 1996 survey to 45%, showing that more TYC staff members than ever are willing to offer their input to help the agency improve. The increased response rate was good news for TYC, and so were the survey findings. The findings showed that, overall, TYC staff are more satisfied than they were two years ago with the agency's performance and with their own working conditions. The survey will help the agency improve even more by indicating the areas where employees are less satisfied or where change is needed.

What looks good:
Employees expressed the most satisfaction with these areas:

• TYC's ability to identify and serve its customers
• TYC's ability to work with other organizations and with its governing bodies (its board and the legislature)
• employees' access to training
• employment benefits and their administration

What needs work:

• Employees expressed the least satisfaction with these areas:
• trust and communication between employees and management
• stress and burnout
• employee empowerment
• the sharing of knowledge and decision making

Constructs: A Quick Overview of the Results

What is a construct?

A survey construct represents a specific aspect of TYC's performance. A score for each construct is generated by combining the average scores for several related questions. The construct scores are an easy way to compare TYC's 1998 survey results to its results in previous years. They can also be used to compare TYC's findings to the statewide results and the results from agencies similar to TYC.

Possible scores range from 100 to 500. The higher the score, the better. For example, a higher score for the "Burnout" construct means that fewer employees are experiencing problems in this area.

What is a benchmark?

The benchmarking categories are a way of comparing TYC's results to those from agencies that are similar to TYC in size (measured in Full-Time Employees) or mission (public safety or criminal justice).

There are twenty constructs in all. These tables show only eleven of them. For a graph showing TYC's scores for all twenty constructs, compared to the scores for agencies in its mission category.

Other facts from the survey's findings:

• TYC's employees tended to agree with each other about what the agency is doing well. They tended to disagree about which areas most need improvement.
• There were variations among groups in the agency in their responses to the questions. For example, employees in Operations or Clinical Care might express more satisfaction about a particular topic than employees in Education or Corrections.
• Because TYC has expanded rapidly over the past two years, questions asking employees to assess the agency's performance over time tended to receive many "don't know/not applicable" responses.

Top Ten Questions

Below are listed the ten questions that received the highest average scores. A high score indicates a high level of satisfaction. Possible responses to these questions were as follows: (1) strongly disagree; (2) disagree; (3) feel neutral; (4) agree; (5) strongly agree; and (6) don't know/not applicable.

Bottom Ten Questions

Below are listed the ten questions that received the lowest average score.

Questions beginning with "Assess . . . " are over time comparison" questions. They asked employees to assess the agency's performance over the last two years. For these questions, employees were given the following responses to choose from: (1) the organization is performing much worse; (2) the organization is performing worse; (3) the organization is performing about the same; (4) the organization is performing better; (5) the organization is performing much better; and (6) don't know/not applicable. A higher score for these questions means a higher level of satisfaction.

Questions followed by an asterisk (*) are negatively phrased questions for which scoring was reversed to maintain scoring convention. Therefore, higher average scores for these questions are desired.

The Next Step

The survey results have given TYC's leadership valuable information about employee attitudes and opinions. The next step in using the survey to improve the agency is to gather feedback from employees on the meaning of the results. This newsletter contains only a few of the survey's findings. A more complete packet of information has been distributed to superintendents and administrators. They have been encouraged to hold voluntary meetings at which employees can find out more about the survey's results in reference to their own work locations. Employees are also encouraged to analyze and discuss these results.