Improving Workplace Climate for Retention and Diversity

Eric M. RiggsAssistant Dean

Diversity and Graduate Student Development

Texas A&M College of Geosciences

Act I: Presentation

• How Texas A&M Geosciences was

charged by their upper administration, along with all colleges in the university, to conduct an assessment of workplace climate

• Understanding organizational health within departments and colleges

Goals

“Diversity at Texas A&M University is an indispensable component of academic excellence. It is not an isolated concept that is separate to creating a culture of preeminence as was envisioned in Vision 2020 or the Academic Master Plan. We simply cannot achieve academic excellence without paying attention to and drawing from the richness and strength reflected in the diversity in our state and nation.”

GoalsAccountability• Establish structures, processes, and policies that hold all units

accountable, and reward units and individuals for demonstrating their current standing, plans, and progress in creating an environment where the diversity of individual identities and ideas are treated equitably in a climate that fosters success and achievement by all.

Climate • Promote a positive and supportive climate by identifying aspects in the

climate of individual units and the University which foster and/or impede a working and learning environment that fully recognizes, values, and integrates diversity in the pursuit of academic excellence.

Equity • Integrate into the mission and goals for the University and units

assurance that students, staff, and faculty (tenure and non-tenure track), regardless of identity, are all treated equitably.

Goals to Action

• Has spurred the creation of Assistant/Associate Dean/Director of Diversity positions around the University

• Has resulted in climate surveys at the University level Faculty Undergraduate and Graduate students Staff

• Community Council on Climate and Diversity founded as well as a campus-wide Diversity Operations Committee

Goals to Action

• Has resulted in University ombuds position reinvigoration

• Has generated an entire training regimen for leadership and key individuals on alternative conflict resolution (mediation)

• Has generated new teeth in hiring procedures and search committee training

College Response

• Charged in 2011 with College-level climate assessments

• Funding was also available from the VP for Diversity

• Other units around the University had made early efforts in workplace climate assessments. College of Liberal Arts College of Education and Human Development College of Engineering University Libraries

College Response

• Decided to follow the Libraries Why? They had elected to work with a professional society in

their field, the Association of Research Libraries, who had developed an instrument called ClimateQUAL with the University of Maryland Industrial and Organizational Psychology Program

Third party Completely confidential Analysis conducted with no TAMU hands in the data Was necessary given our College history Nationally and locally normed data

• Worked with the Association of Research Libraries

• Same instrument used by the Libraries this year and previously – provided local expertise and local as well as nationally-normed data

• Involves faculty, staff and graduate students

• The start of data-driven assessments of workplace climate in the College. Adds local detail to University-wide survey results

2011 College of Geosciences Climate and Diversity Assessment

October 2011• Survey modification and development with ARLNovember – December 2011• Survey open

February 2012• Basic results received from ARL

March – May 2012• More advanced and secondary analysis conducted with Libraries helpFall 2012 – Spring 2013 – Fall 2013• Faculty/staff working group formed• Actions planned to address results• Report to Dean and College written

Survey Schedule

Voluntary, web-based survey, administered off-site by ARL

No TAMU access to raw data

150 questions + Free-Text Comments Box

Approx. 40 minutes to complete

Could be completed in multiple sessions

Basic Survey Information

• Survey administered and raw data stored by an off-site, 3rd party server – the college has no access to the raw survey data at any time

• “6 or more” rule“No team, academic rank or status, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any other

demographic will be identified if 5 or fewer people within that group responded to the survey”

• No cross-tabulation between demographic categories is possible

• The Exception: Comments

• Were shared verbatim with the College- encouraged candid comments with a caution to respondents to

not identify themselves if possible• BUT, comments cannot be mechanically matched to any

participant

Guaranteed Confidential

Survey Demographics Structure

• Altering the team structure from Libraries to an academic College was the biggest challenge

• Created demographic categories for:• Professional academics – by rank & status• Academics in Training – by degree objective &

postdocs• Staff – technical and operations staff

• Broken out by AdLoc as well (9 units)

• Initial demographic information requested was too fine-grained and believe this drove down response rates

Respondent Highlights and Data Analysis

• 147 respondents total: ~ 24% response rate

• Strong response from faculty (45% overall; n = 41)

• Weaker response from graduate students

(14% overall, n = 47) and staff (10% overall, n = 23)

• Broad enough representation across the college, across ranks and work units to generate useful results

• ARL provided statistical analysis of results, including ANOVA at all permissible scales and a measure of significant differences between groups as possible

• Comparison with College averages and national data from all ClimateQUAL users

Act II: Discussion

• How do you define climate?• How do you measure climate?

Let’s take a moment as groups and define this

• Approach to quantitative and qualitative measures that were used/are planning to use in conducting this assessment. What are the benefits and drawbacks for each?

• Study and discuss instruments and response rates.

WISELI

• Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute

• University of Wisconsin-Madison http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu • Campus Climate: Behaviors within a workplace or learning

environment, ranging from subtle to cumulative to dramatic, that can influence whether an individual feels personally safe, listened to, valued, and treated fairly and with respect.

• Climate: The atmosphere or ambience of an organization as perceived by its members. An organization’s climate is reflected in its structures, policies, and practices; the demographics of its membership; the attitudes and values of its members and leaders; and the quality of personal

interactions.

WISELI resourcesDiscussions with and surveys of university faculty, staff, and students reveal 8 common concerns about department climate:

• Lack of respect/consideration/politeness

• Insufficient sense of community or belonging

• Lack of recognition/visibility/value

• Ineffective communication

• Lack of support/inequitable access to professional development opportunities

• Difficulties achieving balance between workand family or personal life

• Illegal behaviors and demeaning, sexualizing, or condescending language and behaviors

• Retention/tenure of women and minorityfaculty, staff, and students

Their document provides practical advice department chairs can use

Organizational Climate for:

• Diversity • Teamwork

• Continual Learning • Leadership

• Innovation • Justice

• Psychological and Personal Safety

ClimateQUALSurvey Question Categories

Organizational Attitudes:• Job Satisfaction• Task Engagement• Work Unit Conflict• Organizational Commitment• Citizenship Behaviors• Psychological Empowerment

26 scales provided overall

Survey Question Categories

ClimateQUAL

Discussion of PDF of ClimateQUAL constructs definition

Discussion of TAMU CEHD instrument

Note – 6 sample instruments are provided for participants

Act III: Review

• Challenges, insights and limitations of the data gathered, and the issues associated with all data of this nature.

Graduate Students are doing well

• Students and postdocs generally reportied a good sense of the reward structure, transparent procedures and good relationships with immediate supervisors. Not so clear for faculty and staff for informational justice.

Agree

Disagree

National average

TAMU Geosciences averageSupervisors treat subordinates

In a polite & equitable manner

Supervisors are open and honest

about standards and procedures

“I can count on my immediate

supervisor to support me.”

Task Engagement is high

“The work I do is important to me.”

Generally good climate for diversity overall

“This organization values the different perspectives that employees bring to the workplace.”

Race is not perceived to affect how people are valued in the workplace

“The race of a co-worker does NOT affect how they are valued in this work unit.”

…however Gender is

“The gender of a co-worker does NOT affect how they are valued in this work unit.”

…and so is Rank

“The rank of a co-worker does NOT affect how they are valued in this work unit.”

Commitment to TAMU Geosciences is variable

“I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful”

Psychological Safety is uneven by status but generally neutral

“As an employee in this work unit one is able to bring up problems and tough issues”

Organizational Withdrawal is a localized issue by status

“I rarely explore other job opportunities by checking job listings or want ads.”

Not all departments responded the same

“As an employee in this work unit one is able to bring up problems and tough issues”

Not all departments responded the same

“I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful”

Not all departments responded the same

“My impact on what happens in my work unit/department is large”

Summary and Implications• Many aspects of the climate of TAMU Geosciences are healthy, and this is good news. Students in particular seem to experience a positive workplace climate.

• Organizational issues related to commitment and citizenship behaviors are widespread. A degree of interpersonal conflict and disagreement on procedure and process are also common, but unevenly distributed.

• Respondents 31-39 years old consistently reported statistically significant (negative) variations in issues surrounding diversity, race, gender, rank, sexual orientation, teamwork, psychological safety and job satisfaction.

• Women and Associate Professors (separately) report statistically significantly lower satisfaction with climate related to gender. This may have implications for retention.

Next Steps

• This process has added valuable quantifiable data that echoes our anecdotal understanding of the situation on the ground across the College

• A faculty, staff and student team representing a broad swath of the College units must also review this data and add their interpretations and help construct recommendations for the way forward

• From this analysis, the team should organize focus groups and other meetings designed to learn more about the trends suggested in this data

• This starts a slow and sustained process which should yield a stronger and improved climate in which our academic strength can grow

Act IV: Ok, so now what?

• Processes and ideas for engaging college and/or departmental stakeholders in formulating next steps.

• Sharing the findings and recommendations of Texas A&M's internal task force which is addressing these same data.

Report to the Dean

• Look through report draft

Finale:

• Reporting session: Collection of ideas from the small group discussions