For many years LSC has conducted a teammate engagement survey through the Institute For Organizational Excellence at the University of Texas. It is important that we know how all of us teammates feel and what’s on our minds. Every LSC community and program uses that feedback to assess and address local teammate engagement and issues. LSC uses the total results to get a feel for teammate engagement across the organization and compare us to other like organizations.
We were looking at the most recent results today and are still following up, even as we prepare to survey all staff again. Last survey 74% of teammates participated; UT considers under 30% as a sign of problems, so 74% is high. Our engagement score was 374 out of 500; 350 and above is considered desirable. So, LSC is in a strong position, but we can always do better!
Teammates rated LSC highest for:
- Strategic: teammates perceptions as being part of the mission, vision, and strategic plan
- Workplace: satisfactory, safe, and with adequate tools and resources
- Supervision: supervisors are fair, helpful, and critical to the flow of work.
Teammate areas of concern were not unusual, especially for a health and human services provider dependent on government for much of its funding: pay, benefits, and internal communications. We can never provide enough of all three, but we are addressing. LSC has raised pay and benefits to address the needs of our teammates, and to recruit and retain teammates. During and in the aftermath of Covid, LSC has raised wages and benefits approximately 30%, which is a huge but needed and deserved increase. LSC’s salaries and benefits for the last fiscal year were over $105,000,000! Just on Feb. 2, 2024, LSC shared over $1.2 million in bonuses from Covid and other funds with all teammates. Long term teammates who work closest to our residents/clients got the bigger bonuses.
Communication is always an issue, and one we work on a lot! We try: team meetings, all staff meetings, virtual meetings, emails/memos/notes to teammates, PayCom messages, bulletin boards, open doors to talk to all supervisors, Scuttlebutt, Voices, our annual Tour de LSC, and all sorts of social media. Wow! That is a lot of communication, and we will keep it up!
74% is a great participation rate from our 2,500 teammates. We will keep working to improve. And please, teammates, be on the lookout for the next engagement survey around June 2024! We hope to hear from every teammate on how to improve.