2005 COE Employee Survey Report - Laserfiche WebLink

New Search

A note about how to read and use this survey report The report is made up of three major sections: executive summary, general summary and appendix. The executive summary provides a brief overview of key findings in narrative form. It allows readers to see key findings quickly, and also appeals to people who like words better than numbers and charts. The general summary starts with background information about the survey and a description of the methodology employed, then moves on to high -level analysis of the results. The analysis in this section: • elaborates on the results mentioned in the executive summary • measures the relationships between features of the workplace and desired outcomes such as satisfaction • prioritizes workplace features based on importance to employees • describes differences between employee groups • uses responses to open -ended questions to provide greater understanding of workplace issues The information is presented in narrative and graphical form, using a series of charts, each of which is immediately prefaced by a brief explanation of what is most important about that chart. This section provides readers with a great deal of information about workplace forces and aids in identifying high priority issues. The charts allow readers to look quickly at a picture, and see at a glance the most important factors in a topic area. The appendix offers detailed tables containing frequencies for all survey questions in survey instrument order, reported City -wide and broken out by department for each question. This section provides readers with a comprehensive list of survey responses, and is useful for looking up responses to specific survey questions or gathering data about an individual department. However, some readers find the sheer volume of numbers reported overwhelming unless they have a specific objective in mind. Typically, people will read the executive summary carefully, read the general summary, then scan the appendix for key results organization -wide and in their own departments, focusing on the factors that the analysis in the general summary identifies as most closely related to important outcomes. A caveat about using survey results for evaluative purposes This report should be used to identify issues and develop a better understanding of employees' experiences rather than to evaluate individuals or departments, for several reasons. First, the instrument was not designed for that purpose. Second, the analysis does not account for the many immutable differences between departments in a complex organization, such as vastly different workforces, types of work, and departmental cultures, all of which can have a strong effect on outcomes without being attributable to individual managers or practices. Finally, estimates tend to become less precise as results are broken down into smaller groups (for example, departments rather that City -wide) because the effect of individual responses is magnified.