Growing a Culture of Feedback
The Division of Enrollment Management believes that healthy and respectful exchanges of feedback are fundamental to our Culture of Belonging. To that end, DEM actively implements new solutions and tools that provide a variety of feedback channels, including regular pulse surveys, pre- and post-event surveys, and opportunities to share kudos and appreciation for our teammates. We seek to foster a feedback culture that is trustworthy, consistent, and genuinely responsive.
This survey is one of the most direct ways we hear from you. Your responses — always anonymous — shape real decisions about how we support each other and build a stronger DEM. Thank you for taking a few minutes to share your perspective.
A Regular Pulse Survey
DEM has identified nine Fundamental Needs that guide our efforts to cultivate a strong and dynamic Culture of Belonging that supports all team members to engage, grow, and perform to their best ability. Our bi-weekly pulse survey helps us track how we’re doing as a division, what’s working, and where we can do better.
Surveys rotate through five themes reflecting the nine fundamental needs. One anchor question about overall satisfaction will provide continuous longitudinal tracking.
Purpose
To leverage real-time insights as a tool to understand our progress toward a culture of belonging and our success in meeting each of the identified fundamental needs.
Objectives
- Collect DEM team members’ voices and thoughts to inform decision making and support mechanisms
- Track engagement, belonging, and well-being on a consistent, comparable timeline
- Identify trends, early warning signs, and areas of strength across offices and teams
- Build a longitudinal data set that enables year-over-year comparison
Methodology
The survey is designed to be a low burden and quick to complete. All responses are on a Likert scale of 1–5. Each survey includes:
- One anchor question (every cycle): overall sense of belonging and support in your work at DEM.
- Five questions: each question will address each of five themes based on DEM’s Fundamental Needs as well as the Surgeon General’s framework for workplace mental health and well-being
- One open-ended question (optional, every cycle): an opportunity to share any thoughts or questions. If you’d like a response, you can share your contact information.
Results
Access
Responses are anonymous and aggregated.
Each DEM Director will have access to view only their Office’s anonymous and aggregated data. A select number of people in the Office of the Vice Provost (Cori, Jeremy, Ann, Justin, Sandra, Sam, and Mike), who facilitate and support survey operations, will have access to results across the division.
Transparency
Insights from pulse surveys will be discussed in unit-level leadership conversations.
Aggregated results and/or insights will be shared in DEM All-Team spaces such as the Insider website, newsletters, and meetings.
Providing Kudos
Microsoft Praise is a quick way to send kudos to another team member. Praise can be sent in Teams directly to a person or shared in a team chat. You can easily track praise you have sent and received on the Microsoft Viva Insights dashboard.
To send praise in a Teams chat, click the + sign at the right of the message box and search for “praise.” You will then get a number of options to customize the note you send.
For more detailed instructions and information, this article provides an overview of Praise.
Anonymity
The DEM biweekly pulse survey uses Qualtrics, which can anonymize responses. The survey will not collect IP addresses, location data, or contact information. The survey asks which office you work in but that will only be used to aggregate data by office.
Participants
All FTE DEM team members are expected to participate. Student or TE team members are not required to participate.
Biweekly Emails
Every other Tuesday morning, each DEM team member receives an email with a survey link and will have until the following Friday to submit their responses. Pulse surveys are most valuable when everyone participates regularly, so all DEM team members are expected to complete the survey by Friday every two weeks unless out of the office.
Five Survey Themes
- Protection from harm: physical and psychological safety, inclusive environment, support systems
- Connection and community: team relationships, collaboration, belonging across offices
- Work-life harmony: workload balance, autonomy, flexibility, ability to recharge
- Mattering at work: recognition, voice, participation, authentic identity
- Opportunity for growth: skill use, innovation, career development, professional learning.
Questions?
If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to the DEM Shared Services team.