As part of the StudentsFirst initiative, the University has formed a partnership with The Gallup Organization to survey employees and students to gauge their understanding of employee and student customer engagement. Unlike a traditional survey of “satisfaction” levels, the StudentsFirst Assessment will measure the quality of the employee-customer interaction at the unit level.
Gallup uses the principles of Six Sigma, which aim to reduce variability and improve performance. Using metrics to define levels of emotional attachment to the organization, Gallup connects employee engagement with customer engagement to identify a numerical score called "Human Sigma" (TM). Gallup has applied its Human Sigma (TM) format in hundreds of organizations. Drexel is the first university to use this tool for identifying areas for improving the customer and employee experience. The outcome of the assessment will be a scorecard for each unit, indicating in a single metric the relative level of employee engagement and customer engagement.
An important element of the overall project will be action plans for improvement based on key findings of the assessment. President Papadakis, the Office of Human Resources and the George and Lois Krall Center for Corporate and Executive Education will collaborate in later phases of the survey.
The assessment of employees and students took place in January of 2006.
The response rate has been extraordinary, indicating strong motivation for change among both our employees and our students. Over 87% of our staff employees responded and over 42% of our nearly 18,000 students participated. Currently over 350 managers are receiving their scorecards which will be the basis for ongoing improvement efforts throughout the University – all of which will be designed to give better service to our students.
President Papadakis plans to repeat the survey in 2007 so that we can understand which of our improvement efforts are providing the best results. |
