The role and importance of the UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey

UAB Medicine is committed to creating and maintaining a work environment that promotes excellence in all that we do. Listening to what faculty say helps us understand our strengths and identify areas for actionable improvement. One of the most vital tools for hearing that faculty voice is the UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey, which launched on Monday, April 10.

Your feedback from the 2016 survey led to movement on several institution-level issues in the past year:

• Leaders are moving forward on committee recommendations to expand child care access
• We developed guidelines for annual performance evaluations for School of Medicine faculty members because a significant number of you indicated that these meetings were not occurring or not helpful. 
• The School of Medicine bridge funding program for investigators was modified.
• Suggestions about the electronic health record offered by physician faculty members have been extremely valuable to the UAB Medicine Electronic Health Record Task Force members who are actively exploring ways to improve these systems.

The survey has been completely redesigned to ensure there are questions related to each of the primary mission areas—education, research and patient care— and to customize the survey to make it as relevant as possible for faculty members, based on their roles within UAB Medicine.

The results of the survey have become a valuable data set that drives UAB Medicine organizational change. The collective faculty perspective definitely points to where improvement is needed and the programmatic solutions are extremely valuable in shaping those improvements. This is the one reason that will be begin sharing the verbatim comments with program leadership, while still maintaining anonymity of the individual survey respondents. We are asking the faculty what they believe is the most critical thing that UAB Medicine leadership needs to do to allow us to accomplish our vision and specific language is quite useful in the response to this question.

We are aware that a Campus Engagement Survey is being conducted during this same time period. There is some overlap in the items, particularly in the areas of teaching and research. This is to be expected, as these are the areas where there is the greatest overlap between programs lead by UAB Medicine and those under leadership of UAB central administration. We will continue to work with UAB leadership to reduce the amount of time that faculty members devote to organizational surveys while still gaining the critical input we need.

The survey runs from April 10-24, 2017. I encourage all faculty to take this opportunity to share their perspective with leadership to ensure UAB Medicine continues on the journey to be the preferred academic medical center.

If you have any questions about the UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey, please contact Anne Graham, HR manager in the School of Medicine.