Employee engagement

Our employees have spoken, and we have heard

2025 Engagement Survey Action Planning Summary

The 2025 Faculty and Staff Engagement Survey provides a snapshot of how employees across the College of Arts and Sciences experience their work environment, leadership and institutional support. Administered by Arthur J. Gallagher, the confidential survey captured responses from 882 participants and achieved an overall favorable score of 81%. Results highlighted strengths in collegiality, belonging and inclusive workplace behaviors, while identifying career growth, onboarding and retention as important opportunities for continued action.

In response, the college is advancing several initiatives:

  • New Employee Orientation: A new college-level orientation program introduces employees to A&S leaders, organizational structure, resources and opportunities for wellbeing, connection and belonging. Guided by the Welcome, Land, Launch framework, the program complements campus and departmental onboarding and helps new employees navigate the college successfully.
  • Retention and Work Environment: The Ask Me Anything (AMA) Network will connect employees across roles and units through skills-based and role-based Microsoft Teams channels, expanding access to peer support, shared tools and professional expertise.
  • Career Growth: The Access & Community Engagement Office is expanding faculty and staff development through its mentoring program, the Access, Innovation & Disability Symposium digital badge, neurodiversity training for supervisors and a planned A&S micro-credential anticipated to launch in fall 2026.

Survey Results

 

2017 Engagement Survey

A fall 2017 employee engagement survey revealed that CU Boulder staff members, while showing some signs of satisfaction, also experience undue stress and encounter barriers to personal and institutional success. We are striving to help.

Be Heard, an initiative of the College of Arts and Sciences, is an employee and organizational wellness program that aims to make CU Boulder a top place to be employed and to address some concerns illustrated in the employee engagement survey. Taking this step means investing in our most valuable asset: our employees. Be Heard is designed first to demonstrate care for and awareness of the stress our colleagues endure.

Groups of faculty and staff shared their innovative ideas for engagement and growth. They fostered skill-building for effective change management, which pave the way for a more inclusive, efficient and collaborative work environment.  

Be Heard comprised four phases of workshops during the 2018-19 academic year:

  • Phase 1: Personal Resilience—evidenced-based programming will provide tools to self-regulate the harm of a stressful work environment in the moment. Increases in resilience capacity at the individual level will be the foundation for working groups to change antiquated processes, procedures and climates.
  • Phase 2: Leadership Foundations—leveraging the power of storytelling, participants will craft their unique leadership narrative, thus empowering all levels of employees to be agents of change.
  • Phase 3: Innovation & Change Management—embodying a growth mindset in the face of adversity, coupled with tactical skill-building for proposing and enacting change, participants will make strategic planning actionable.
  • Phase 4: Institutionalizing Change—armed with comprehensive action plans to support innovative change initiatives, working teams will propose and implement self-generated change for employee, campus and student populations.

Participating in Be Heard conveyed benefits including the following: Increased resilience and decreased stress, leadership development, networking, change and project management skill building, innovative solutions for organizational change and more!