In its ongoing effort to create a supportive work environment, UC San Francisco will launch its annual staff engagement survey on Tuesday, April 9.
Staff are encouraged to provide candid feedback in the survey to inform UCSF as it strives to provide a more inclusive and engaging place to work, and to foster support for staff members’ overall well-being. Feedback is invaluable to shape UCSF-wide action plans that strive to make all members of the UCSF community feel valued and supported in the workplace.
The short, confidential survey, administered by Gallup, is open to staff across campus including UCSF Health, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians. The survey can be completed via mobile phones, tablets and computers, to make it easy for all staff to participate.
The deadline to complete the survey is Friday, May 3.
“The staff engagement survey allows us to make a deeper, year-after-year assessment of our current work environment and understand how we can continue to make progress toward an inclusive and supportive workplace for all,” said Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS.
Fostering a culture of patient safety
This year, for the first time, questions to assess UCSF’s culture of patient safety within the health system have been added for most UCSF Health staff, including UCSF Benioff Oakland and Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital. A separate survey with the same questions will be sent to providers, trainees and residents.
Understanding how we continue to strengthen our safety culture helps us prevent harm for our patients and colleagues.”
“Fostering a culture of safety is essential to providing outstanding patient care,” said Amy Lu, MD, MPH, chief quality officer, UCSF Health. “Understanding how we continue to strengthen our safety culture helps us prevent harm for our patients and colleagues and improves staff engagement and patient experience.”
The data derived from the Gallup survey will provide information that can be used at the UCSF-wide, department and team levels. UCSF-wide results will be evaluated for trends and patterns to identify ways to improve the working environment across the institution.
The UCSF Action Plan continues to drive work building roadmaps for staff, helping managers serve as advocates and identifying and addressing unconscious bias. Managers and work teams will be able to use the staff survey results to create action plans designed to build upon their strengths and to overcome challenges that are under their control.
Gallup’s analysis of UCSF’s own data shows that teams that engage in the action planning process throughout the year consistently have stronger levels of engagement. The Chancellor’s Cabinet will be reviewing UCSF’s progress on engagement action planning in this year’s survey’s results.
Learning from 2023 results
Since UCSF began conducting the staff engagement survey in 2011, the engagement trend has been positive with some deviation between 2019 and 2022, due to the pandemic, world issues and financial challenges. In 2023, the survey found that overall engagement at UCSF was 3.95 (out of 5), an increase of 0.03 from 2022, reflecting UCSF’s greater focus on creating a healthier, supportive, and more inclusive environment.
Since wellness has become a priority in the last two years, UCSF added well-being as a focus area with questions related to burnout and wellness overall. UCSF’s 2023 survey results found that 36% of respondents felt burned out often or always as compared to the national average of 29% for the health care industry. UCSF’s overall well-being scored in the 17th percentile, which falls into the lowest Gallup benchmark category.
According to Gallup, employee engagement and well-being, when brought together, create a high-performance employee environment in which the two inform and build on one another. Addressing burnout and well-being within teams and across UCSF supports staff engagement, patient safety, and UCSF’s overall mission.
Get survey results at June Town Hall
Survey results will be available across UCSF on Wednesday, May 15.
UCSF’s Learning and Organization Development team will share the 2024 survey results in a town hall meeting on Friday, June 28 where Gallup will present UCSF’s results.
“The engagement survey is an opportunity for staff to collectively elevate their voices and be heard,” said Nancy Duranteau, UCSF’s chief learning officer and director of Learning and Organization Development.
“The results reliably help us assess where we’ve been, where we are today and where we must go to foster the culture of safety, mutual respect, open communication, and continuous growth that align with our UCSF mission and values.”