Dear Tanya,

I am in receipt of Resolution 4, which calls for each dean, vice president and vice provost who received a unit-level staff survey to “submit a formal plan that address all areas of the survey and any other areas identified by their respective individual colleges, departments or units with action items, person or persons responsible, communications plans, tangible success metrics, target completion dates and any additional information necessary.”

Resolution 4 also recommends that progress on responding to local issues, as identified in these plans, “be factored into yearly performance appraisals for those submitting the respective plans and that President Skorton and Provost Fuchs review these annually and report back to the Assembly yearly on their progress.”

As you know, I supported conducting the employee survey in order for the university to get a sense of the issues we have to address within our workplace. I am looking forward to reviewing the report that the EA will be submitting to me after the deliberations that began last summer on the four key university-wide issues that emerged from the survey.

I also agree that it is very important that each leader take seriously the issues that emerged at the college/unit level and do what they can to understand those issues and, where possible, address them. Provost Fuchs and I have asked each dean, vice president and vice provost to provide us with an update on their efforts to address these issues as part of their annual report this year. We will ask that these updates include such matters as actions planned, actions completed and efforts to involve staff in past and ongoing activities to address the issues of the survey. We will consider their efforts as we conduct their annual performance appraisals.

In addition, I will work with Institutional Research and Planning to determine when we should re-survey the employees, so that we can assess the impact of these efforts on the workplace climate.

Thank you again for your partnership in improving the workplace for all of our staff.

Best regards,

David Skorton