In September 2021, as an extension of our WNMU Project +1 Team, the Employee Engagement Survey Team, comprised of members from staff & faculty across multiple divisions, was formed to create and administer a survey to measure employees' commitment, motivation, sense of purpose, and passion for their work and organization. An employee survey had not been completed in over 10 years at WNMU.

On November 8th of 2021, the survey was launched in-house, using Microsoft 365 FORMS as our application of choice. The survey was open for 5 days to allow all employees to participate. The results of this survey would set the baseline for future reporting and create a path to identify changes needed to further engage our workforce. Over 204 full-time, Staff & Faculty responded to the call...our adjunct and student worker workforce did not reach a confidence level of >95% but all comments were captured in the analysis.

	Staff (137) & Faculty (67)	Adjunct Faculty	Student Workers
Final Response Count	204	24	26
Confidence Level	>95%	41%	50%

The overall Engagement score calculations show an average score of 3.9 for Staff and 3.7 for Faculty out of a possible 5 (where 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree). Faculty scored 82% of the questions between 3 and 5 with 44% scoring above 4.

A final note on response: You had MUCH to say...based on the voluntary, open-ended questions, we received over 850 entries, where many had multiple thoughts in one answer. This resulted in thousands of text answers to analyze. A HUGE shout out to all of you who responded!!

WNMU Employee Engagement Survey Results PDF

What's Next?

Join our CALL TO ACTION TODAY! Volunteers are needed to serve on the project team to be a part of the change...details can be found on the flyer below!


Please direct any questions to any of the team members listed above or to the Department of Professional Development - we will be providing updates periodically throughout the course of the project.

On behalf of our WNMU Leadership Team, the Professional Development Department, and most importantly, our Employee Engagement Survey Team, we THANK YOU for sharing your thoughts, your passions, your concerns, and your ideas for change.

In September 2021, as an extension of our WNMU Project +1 Team, the Employee Engagement Survey Team, comprised of members from staff & faculty across multiple divisions, was formed to create and administer a survey to measure employees' commitment, motivation, sense of purpose, and passion for their work and organization. An employee survey had not been completed in over 10 years at WNMU.

On November 8th of 2021, the survey was launched in-house, using Microsoft 365 FORMS as our application of choice. The survey was open for 5 days to allow all employees to participate. The results of this survey would set the baseline for future reporting and create a path to identify changes needed to further engage our workforce. Over 204 full-time, Staff & Faculty responded to the call...our adjunct and student worker workforce did not reach a confidence level of >95% but all comments were captured in the analysis.

	Staff (137) & Faculty (67)	Adjunct Faculty	Student Workers
Final Response Count	204	24	26
Confidence Level	>95%	41%	50%

The overall Engagement score calculations show an average score of 3.9 for Staff and 3.7 for Faculty out of a possible 5 (where 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree). Faculty scored 82% of the questions between 3 and 5 with 44% scoring above 4.

A final note on response: You had MUCH to say...based on the voluntary, open-ended questions, we received over 850 entries, where many had multiple thoughts in one answer. This resulted in thousands of text answers to analyze. A HUGE shout out to all of you who responded!!

WNMU Employee Engagement Survey Results PDF

What's Next?

Join our CALL TO ACTION TODAY! Volunteers are needed to serve on the project team to be a part of the change...details can be found on the flyer below!


Please direct any questions to any of the team members listed above or to the Department of Professional Development - we will be providing updates periodically throughout the course of the project.

On behalf of our WNMU Leadership Team, the Professional Development Department, and most importantly, our Employee Engagement Survey Team, we THANK YOU for sharing your thoughts, your passions, your concerns, and your ideas for change.

Thank you to all the Employee Engagement survey respondents – over 58% of the WNMU Faculty and Staff completed the Employee Engagement Survey from 11/8-11/16/21. Additional thanks to all those who took the time to comment too. We received over 850 comments helping us better understand what you needed to say. To bottom line it, WNMU achieved over a 95% confidence level in the results, thanks to your participation!

Next, based on the respondents’ reported categorization, over 68% of Faculty took the survey – a very impressive number!! Staff also had a good showing with 52% completing the survey!

Additional Demographics

Length of service:
Half of the respondents have worked at the University less than 6 years; the rest is split between 6-10 years (27%) and 23% for over 10 years.

Age:
The age range of the respondents skewed to those over 45 (53%), with those 25-45 at 41% and the under 25 group making up the small, remaining portion of 5%!

Career Stage:
Finally, the largest portion of the respondents are in Mid-Career (45%), Early and Late career were essentially evenly split at 29% and 26%, respectively.

Next Steps
The plan is to analyze the data during the month of December 2021. We hope to be able to present findings to you in late January / early February 2022.

If you have any questions about the Survey or the information in this article, please contact us on Pro dev @ x6245 or x6246 or via email at bobbi.dodson@wnmu.edu or jennifer.truitt@wnmu.edu.

WHY? To change lives.
The Western New Mexico University 2021 Employee Engagement Survey launches Monday, November 8th, and runs through Friday, November 12th. This will be an opportunity for you to tell us how you feel about WNMU and the direction we have taken to achieve our goal of 4,000 students by the Fall 2022.

As an employee at WNMU, you have an amazing opportunity to change lives: the lives of our students, our colleagues, our community, even ourselves. To improve, we need to understand the true challenges and what else is needed to continue your positive contribution to the university. Your input and feedback on this survey will help pave the way for future improvements as we move toward an environment of service excellence and support of those 4,000 students.

HOW?
To ensure easy and direct access for WNMU employees, the 2021 Engagement Survey will be accessible under the Employee tab through Mustang Express beginning Monday, November 8th.

Please answer openly and honestly; all answers will remain anonymous and confidential through all parts of this process. EVEN THOUGH YOU SIGNED INTO MUSTANG EXPRESS, the credentials are not passed to the survey. This is the same process used in Faculty Senate voting.

WHO?
There are multiple surveys: one for faculty and staff, one for student workers and one for adjunct faculty. Access to each survey will be limited to those groups. Please make sure that you take the correct survey. You can access the surveys from Mustang Express or from the email communications that will be sent.

WHAT’S NEXT?
During December/January, the Employee Engagement Survey team will perform analysis on the results to uncover key themes. Results will be shared with leadership early in the Spring 2022 semester. This will include recommendations/action items that can be incorporated into future departmental goals. This will be a continuous process where we will run surveys bi-annually to check our progress and identify new areas to improve.

Thank you for your assistance in making WNMU a better place to work. If you have any questions about the upcoming survey, please feel free to reach out.

Kind regards,
Bobbi Dodson,
WNMU Professional Development

Dear faculty and staff,

I wish to update you as to the plan to position our university accordingly to increase our enrollment to 4,000 students by the fall of 2022. To that end I wish to begin with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that was used in part and is encoded on the parachute of the recent Mars rover, Perseverance, who coincidentally sent the world the first 4k photo of Mars as we launch our own 4k initiative:

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

And so, it is that we dare mighty things and, indeed, it is possible that we may fail, but any such failure will pale in comparison to the failure of not trying. COVID has presented us an opportunity to change how we educate and attract those to be educated. We must move decisively away from our past habits and explore different ways of doing things. I have spoken to many of you and have appreciated your thoughtful comments. More importantly, your positive attitude about changing our future is inspiring.

Over the last several months, we have examined all of our programs and processes. We have identified some of the challenges and obstacles that we face. It has become evident that we need to shift our productivity away from the status quo. Through the university’s leadership, we have begun to identify areas of opportunity in professional development, training, advising, recruiting, cashiering, financial resources, and all areas that affect a student’s journey on their path to success. Most recently, leadership has begun building a document whose rough draft will be shared with the University Planning Council for feedback, comments and revision. That document will be shared with our Board of Regents to secure the necessary funding to implement this massive change.

How you can help is by being part of sharing your thoughts, energy, and commitment to changing how we educate and the processes that need to be adjusted for greater success. Our strength is you and it is upon your abilities that we will better our university and more importantly, better the lives of our students.

We are embarking on a journey that won’t be easy. Excellence is not achievable by those unwilling to pursue it. Together, nothing is impossible. Thank you joining in the journey as we dare mighty things.

Go Mustangs,

Joseph (Joe) Shepard, Ph.D.
President