UW News

January 24, 2008

How’s it going in 2008? New survey to measure progress of Leadership, Community and Values Initiative

UW News

The Leadership, Community and Values Initiative (LCVI) began in 2005, and among its flagship efforts was a campuswide climate survey to examine how people feel about working at the UW.


Faculty and staff responded, submitting more than 2,000 pages of comments, and participating in dozens of discussion groups on all the UW campuses. The survey’s results helped spark efforts to improve communication, career development and advancement, diversity programming, community building and the balance between home life and work.


Now, as 2008 begins to unfold, it’s time to review the work done so far by the LCVI and to set a course for the future.


And toward that end, a second survey has been created, with the hopes that faculty and staff will take a few minutes to fill it out. You can access the survey online www.washington.edu/president/lcvi/survey.html. Paper copies of the survey will be mailed out by request, and you can get one by calling 206-543-1957.


The 2008 “reassessment survey” was created by members of the LCVI Steering Committee, and will be analyzed by Elizabeth Warrick, the UW’s director of Professional & Organizational Development. Warrick said the new climate survey seeks to learn how UW employees are experiencing their jobs now, and what change there has been in these views since the LCVI project began.


“We’re hoping to find out what’s on people’s minds now,” said Warrick. “The same things? New issues that perhaps we need to turn our attention to?”


She said faculty and staff from the Seattle and Bothell campuses as well as UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center are invited to respond to the survey. UW Tacoma conducted its own climate survey in 2006, so will not repeat the effort this year.


Warrick said the surveys are anonymous and confidential. “I will be the only one dealing with the raw data, and there will be no indicators whatsoever of who said what or who wrote what.”


Still, there are demographic questions on the survey — about age, gender, parental status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, work location, marital status so on. Warrick said if people are concerned that their answers to such questions could end up circumstantially identifying them, they should skip those questions — but she encouraged them to complete the rest of the survey anyhow. She said she’d rather have people skip those parts than skip the survey entirely.


The reassessment surveys will be available online until Feb. 8, after which time Warrick will begin analyzing the data. “The target is for me to spend most of February and the beginning of March” working with the surveys, she said. She hopes to release results of at least the initial data in late March or early April.


Warrick said her analysis of the survey will include information for department and unit leaders on how their area of campus responded to the questions.


Also coming up, on Tuesday, Feb. 6, is LCVI Day. Many resources relating to the work of the LCVI will be on display at a Resource Fair in the HUB ballroom and other rooms from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. These include, among several others:


  • The President’s Advisory on Women
  • The English in the Workplace program
  • The Cascade Center for Public Service and Leadership, in the Evans School
  • The Tuition Exemption program
  • Disability Employment Services
  • The Professional Staff Organization


LCVI Day also will feature workshops and panel discussions on topics including mentoring, career development, building leadership skills, diversity on campus and recognition of peers. A poster session also will be available, where visitors can see what various UW departments are doing to improve the culture of the workplace.


As organizers’ notes say of the informational day, “Everyone can leave with the knowledge of at least one thing they can do to shape a workplace that supports excellence and growth.”


And for those who have not yet filled out the new survey, there will be laptops available for that purpose during LCVI Day.


Warrick said the survey and day of activities are all part of learning “how the last LCVI efforts went, and what to focus on next.”


She said it all comes back to a quote from UW President Mark Emmert, which is posted on the LCVI Web site: “I believe that the University of Washington can become a place that is just as exemplary for the quality of its leadership and working environment as for the quality of its teaching and research.”