Employee Surveys

Summer, 2023

Thank you for another robust response to our regular State of the Workplace survey - more than 2,000 of you shared your experiences with us. At a high level, the average score on all questions rose - this suggests your workplace experience is improving. Some highlights include:

• 87% of you agree that Achieve Together is fair and accurate for your performance evaluations. This is an incredible validation of the design of our program. In addition to Achieve Together being a critical element in our plan to create a culture of coaching at UC Berkeley, we implemented Achieve Together because we believed it is the best way to fairly and accurately evaluate our employees - and this data says that the program is working. In addition, we also know that Achieve Together has dramatically reduced the bias against our historically marginalized employees that was present when we did the “once a year” evaluations. Our program is consistently held up as a model for other universities across the country.
• Trust in your division-level leaders has risen tothe highest level since we began surveying you. Throughout the pandemic, our leaders rose to meet the unprecedented challenges that confronted them and built even stronger organizations across campus. These trust-building efforts, featuring Berkeley Law, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance, and University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR), highlight what we have learned about how to build trust.
• 50% of you who supervise professional staff are interested in a higher-level role at Berkeley. For those who do not currently supervise others, a clear third are interested in a supervisory or management role. However, we’ve also learned that, for a variety of reasons, many of you have not yet pursued management opportunities or are uncertain about how to even begin that journey. We want to work with you to make sure that you are achieving your career goals.

Differences among Demographic Groups:
Race/Ethnicity

Generally, we are seeing improved average ratings for our historically marginalized populations, but for ethnic/racial groups with approximately 100 responses the following comes into focus:

• There is a large difference in the agreement (17%) between Black (64%) and White (81%) staff about trusting their immediate supervisor.
• 58% of White staff trust their division-level leaders, while Black, Chinese, Hispanic, and Two or More Races staff were around 50%.
• Black staff had the lowest agreement (51%) with “I have an equal opportunity to succeed”, especially compared with White (75%). 

Gender Identity

• The largest demographic groups, Male and Female staff saw improvements across all benchmarked ratings.
• The next largest demographic group, Genderqueer or Non-Binary, generally saw a decline in average agreement, most notably around supervisors promoting an inclusive team environment, trust in immediate supervisor, and having an equal opportunity to succeed.

Sexual Orientation

• In general, we saw an improvement in all benchmarked ratings.
• Queer staff (the next largest demographic behind Heterosexual) however did see a general decline in average ratings, with the largest drops on issues around supervisors promoting an inclusive team environment and trust in their immediate supervisor - 65% and 71% agreeing with these statements respectively.

Disability Status

• Again, we saw general improvements across all benchmarked questions, although our employees with disabilities still have a less favorable experience in the workplace. Notably, only 58% of employees with disabilities agree that they have an equal opportunity to succeed whereas 71% of employees without disabilities agree. 

What are we doing about the results?We have many ways to help people become managers for the first time or move even higher up the ranks. As a first step, you should always start with simply talking it through with your current supervisor - the new Achieve Together conversation period that just opened is the perfect time for this. We also have programs to support individual contributors interested in moving into management, to many other opportunities to help you advance your career, including one-on-one career coaching appointments. Also, look into the benefits of the BSA mentor/mentee program which will open up for applications in Spring.

To help our managers create more inclusive workplaces, we launched the Inclusive Leadership Academy last year to provide leaders with the content knowledge, leadership behaviors, and support to effectively lead our diverse staff community. We are also exploring ways to enhance our support for employees with disabilities, particularly with respect to providing necessary accommodations. By building incremental steps for all managers we are on our way to creating a culture at Berkeley where every manager will be expected to have this essential skillset. 

What’s Next?We are putting the finishing touches to our new State of the Workplace Index, an online dashboard comparison tool, that will allow you to view the overall workplace experience score for your division and campus, including an equity index that calculates whether or not people are being treated equitably. More to come on that soon.

Our next survey won’t take place until 2024, but until then please do not hesitate to reach out to provide feedback about your experience so that we can continue to make the workplace experience better for everyone at Berkeley.