Town Hall: 2021 UCSF Staff Engagement Survey Results

[Joe Guglielmo]
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our summer Town Hall. I'd like to start off by just reminding you of a few tips before we begin. As a reminder, your audio and video will be automatically muted. Only the panelists can unmute themselves. Note that the chat function is disabled. For any questions the participants have, please use the Q&A feature, and we'll try to answer these questions by the end of the Town Hall, which will end at four o'clock sharp. But if we miss any questions, any outstanding questions will be answered in email, or if they're anonymous, we'll try to do them at the next town hall. As always, we will hold all questions until the end of the town hall.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So I think as you know, the focus really, today is going to be the presentation of our Gallup engagement results. But I thought I would spend a few moments first to give you a brief update on COVID. For a while, we stopped giving you the update on COVID that we had been doing pretty religiously over the past several months. But the last month or so as changed things quite a bit. And I thought it may be worth just briefly updating where we are in COVID and what that really means to the School of Pharmacy.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So I think I'm not going to get into the statistics at all. But I think you all have been keeping track. We clearly have a surge right now in COVID. I think you also are aware that this surge, both locally, state, nationally, internationally is due to what is known as the Delta variant. I think you know a little bit about the Delta variant. What we do know about it is the Delta variant is absolutely much more transmissible and the rate is somewhere between two and four times more transmissible than some of the previous variants. It doesn't appear to be more virulent, or ability to cause disease, than some of the others, but much more likely to be transmitted.

[Joe Guglielmo]
And I think you know that the current vaccines are quite effective in preventing infection, but breakthroughs do take place. What is important to say right now is while there are breakthroughs, the real strength of the current vaccines is there's unequivocally a benefit in reducing serious infection. And objectively you can say that, that hospitalization as well as death is significantly reduced in those nations, in those communities, that are highly vaccinated, regardless of whether the virus is the Delta virus or another variant, regardless. To reinforce that we have a surge, maybe I'll go straight to UCSF, you may remember, in UCSF, at times we had over 100 hospitalized COVID patients. We had got that down to a total of two, I think that was our lowest we ever hit. And as we speak, when I checked today, we were up to 24 patients hospitalized at UCSF, and most of them required critical care, in other words, were in an ICU, many of whom required ventilator support.

[Joe Guglielmo]
Much like the national and the international data, it's clear that the UCSF data is very similar, and that is, if you look at the patients that have been admitted into the hospital, almost all of them have been unvaccinated patients. The exception has been an immune compromised patients. So therefore, patients that maybe had a kidney transplant or similar sort of disease, where we now know the science shows that two vaccinations of Moderna or the Pfizer, at best, we can expect 30 or 40% efficacy in a patient who is immune compromised.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So what has happened as a result of these facts that I think you're probably fairly aware of? Well, you know that it's been quite dynamic. It's been confusing, too, because the CDC, and the federal government, and the state government, and our counties, and UCSF, they've all seemed to be a little different in what their recommendations are. One thing I can say. And all you have to do is follow the news in the last 24 hours, if not the last 24 minutes, frankly, but everybody is ratcheting up precautions, and those precautions are particularly focused upon mask mandates. To that end, you may you may know, like I said I wasn't being facetious when I said in the last 24 minutes, because about less than half hour ago, President Biden announced that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against coronavirus or they will be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements, and restrictions on most travel.

[Joe Guglielmo]
However, the government also called on states and territories and local governments to pay $100 to Americans who remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus to get their shots.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So what about UCSF? What does this all mean to UCSF and specifically the School of Pharmacy? Well, there's no doubt about it. Everybody must be vaccinated. And this is not unique to UCSF. As you know, this is a University of California mandate. And you may have heard at the last Town Hall the campus had last Friday, those that either refuse or cannot be vaccinated, there will be other restrictions and assessments for those individuals.

[Joe Guglielmo]
We do know, even two weeks ago when we came into campus, some of us came into campus, you did not have to wear a mask necessarily. I remember when we welcomed all the new residents, nobody in the room had a mask on including myself. But that's all changed now anywhere on campus. Whether you're vaccinated or not, you must wear mask. The other thing I want to point out is you must fill out the daily UCSF health screen and you must fill it out honestly, if you have symptoms consistent with colds or other sorts of diseases, that's even a possibility of being coronavirus, you got to say so honestly, and some of you already know that the inconsistency of use of the health screen has already resulted in a number of individuals who in fact have turned out to have coronavirus. And this has resulted in the obvious problems with infection control, which take place when it turns out someone's been exposed to coronavirus.

[Joe Guglielmo]
The last thing I'll say is that a number of you, I know certainly the Dean's Office, we've been moving toward the creation of a flexible work model. But the current surge has absolutely slowed our ability to move steadily towards those future hybrid models. But we're absolutely not abandoning that. I want to give kudos once again to Liana Crosby and Eric Davila, who have shepherded these efforts. We will continue to work on those to create, to modify. But it's clear the return to work may be temporarily slowed. As you know, it's still a sitting that October from the campus. I mean, from the Chancellor on the campus, I do not know if that will be changed. I know the Dean's Office, we have taken a deep breath. We were coming back trying to get together once a week, we now are taking a pause on that, because we believe it may be more harm than good at the moment. But it doesn't mean we're abandoning the inevitable and that is some short some sort of hybrid model in the future. Those are my thoughts.

[Joe Guglielmo]
Now we move to really the topical category today, and that is to talk about the staff engagement survey results. Leading that are going to be Alesia Woods, associate dean of administration and finance, and Liana Crosby, executive assistant to the dean, but also the Gallup ambassador for the School of Pharmacy. So I turn it over now pass the baton to Alesia and Liana.

[Alesia Woods]
Greetings. Thank you, Joe. I'd like to start off by providing facts about the Gallup survey. The Gallup survey is the campus's way of measuring how we're doing. The Gallup survey isn't mandatory; employees volunteer to take it. All responses are confidential. And there's no way for a supervisor or a manager to know what staff say on the survey. UCSF is a zero tolerance of retaliation. So if an employee feels that they're being retaliated against, because a supervisor or manager thinks he or she said something negatively on the survey, there's a hotline and an office to report such behavior. I'd like to give a big thanks to those of you who took the survey and allow your voices to be heard. We hear you.

[Alesia Woods]
Who created the questions? But the Gallup survey UCSF uses an outside consulting firm, Gallup International Research has identified 12 specifically worded measures about the engagement that indicates a high performing work environment. The measures are known as Q12. Those were the 12 questions you answered on the survey, and they're listed on the screen. What the 12 questions tell us about an institution: growth, teamwork, individual and basic needs.

[Alesia Woods]
Growth. You saw the question on the survey. This year I had the opportunity to work, learn, and grow. Teamwork. I have a best friend at work. Individual, there is someone at work who encourages my development and growth. Basic needs, I have the materials and equipment to do my work. Additionally, there were questions tailored toward key UCSF priorities, including indices on accountability, belonging, and recommending UCSF as a workplace. There was also one open ended question: what can UCSF do to make this an even better workplace? That question required you to write in your responses.

[Alesia Woods]
In a few minutes, Liana will provide us with the themes on what we heard you say. What you need to know about the survey this year. This year the Gallup survey is unlike any of the prior years. The chancellor and his leadership team have charged the deans in each school with addressing the schools' feedback from the results. The deans must meet with chairs and directors in your departments and units to talk about the issues you've stated in the survey and create action plans addressing issues. The action plans must be entered into the Gallup database and will be monitored by the team outside of School of Pharmacy for quarterly progress. School of Pharmacy has to state what actions were taken to address your issues. The chancellor leadership team has assembled labs to help us address these issues. There will be some issues that the School of Pharmacy cannot address like parking and things of that nature that are more on the campus side. But School of Pharmacy will be addressing issues directly related to the school and your department. We hear you loud and clear.

[Alesia Woods]
The learning organization and Development Office has created a series of mandatory training for managers, supervisors to help them better manage and engage staff. Joe and I believe that every employee deserves to work in an environment that fosters learning, knowledge, and sharing. Growth and development opportunity equals happier, healthier, engaged employees. During the next month, you should be meeting with your manager and/or chair to review the survey results and create action plans. The message that I'd like to leave you with is that we hear you loud and clear. Next, I'll turn this over to Liana, who will provide you with some of the things and verbatims that we selected directly from the survey.

[Liana Crosby]
Thank you so much, Alesia. And actually, Alesia, I wasn't sure if you wanted to speak about this slide before I move on to the verbatim?

[Alesia Woods]
Yes. So here's the survey comparing to 2019. We didn't have a survey in 2020. So it provides us with the overall so grant means from the prior year. So if we look at the overall school, we see the grand mean was point 24. So that means we were better than 2019. If we go through and look at each one of the departments, we clearly see BTS had an increase of 0.31, Clinical Pharmacy 0.54, Poison Control, had a negative 0.15. Pharm Chem was one of the outstanding departments that had a big increase for 0.61. And then the Dean's Office consists of the education, OEIS, OSACA, the administration in QBI, I think it was rolled up into the Dean's Office.

[Alesia Woods]
And so if you go through and you see, look at the questions, you will clearly see these are the Q12 questions that I referred to earlier. And it gives you, t provides you with some type of input on how people felt when they responded to these questions. Number Q5 says "cares about me at work." We see that Clinical Pharmacy had a 0.42. So that clearly means that staff in Clinical Pharmacy feels that there is someone who cares about them.

[Liana Crosby]
Thank you so much. Yes, thank you so much, Alicia. I think the next slide goes into the major themes of the verbatim responses. And so for those of you that don't know, my name is Liana, and I support Dean Joe. And as Joe mentioned, I've been coordinating the Gallup for the School. And as Alesia mentioned before, in addition to the 12 questions that gets scored each year, which Alesia just went over, there was one that gets asked to solicit written feedback. And there were a total of 70 written responses that we received from you all. And this is a set of themes that sort of rose to the top in 2021, compared with what the themes were in 2019. And you will see that telework and flex work, and yes, engagement events, you know, events to sort of strengthen sense of community, emerged as new themes this year, which are, you know, didn't exist in 2019. And I think we all know why.

[Liana Crosby]
The other themes sort of carried forward into this year. And as you can see, pay salary is always a top theme. And this year, it was no different. So the question that sort of solicits verbatim feedback is, "What could UCSF do to make this an even better place to work?" And we wanted to share some samples with you of some of the things that you have told us. And as I share some of these responses, I wanted to speak about sort of my reaction to some of the things I read. And I have worked in the School of Pharmacy Dean's Office for almost five years now. And in that time, I have consistently felt respected, heard, and empowered. And this is why it was so upsetting to me to read that I have colleagues in the School that do not have that experience. I want to work in a School that respects everybody, not just me. And the School should be a place where everyone should feel respected, heard, and empowered to bring change where they are able to. And that includes staff, students, and faculty.

[Liana Crosby]
If you are being disrespected, or you see someone being disrespected by another staff, a faculty, an administrator, or student, if you see unprofessional, disrespectful, unethical behavior, please speak up. And I want to echo what Alesia said, thank you so much to those of you who are brave enough to write these notes. There are obviously some things that are anonymous. And so you know, if you feel like this is not a sufficient way to address the issues that you are concerned about, please take it to someone that you feel you can trust. And if it's not your supervisor, you can go to a colleague and in another school on campus even, just anyone that you feel you can trust. Or you can go to the Ombuds office.

[Liana Crosby]
And all of this also ties into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion concerns that you have expressed in your comments. The phrase in this first comment that really resonated with me is "it's ridiculous, the amount of performative allyship UCSF promotes and engages in and then fails to truly make strides for change in making the UCSF, making UCSF a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive organization. Yeah, I should not be... Our efforts around DEI should not be for appearances, they should be designed to bring real and lasting change. But I think that this is work that we all should be doing. If we want to help our colleagues feel that they belong, and this is a key concern for us, we want everyone to feel that they belong and that they are respected. It doesn't matter what race or culture you identify with. It doesn't matter if you're staff or student or faculty, each of us should be working towards this goal.

[Liana Crosby]
And I have to say, again, just stress that the fundamental thing that each of us have to do is treat everyone with respect. It starts with that. And so the last quick thoughts I wanted to share around telework. I know this is sort of a, you know, on everyone's mind, Eric and I, Eric Davila and I have been coordinating the Dean's Office telework pilot for the past six months. And we are being very thoughtful about it as we go through. And I wanted to let you know why. The entire city has been sheltering in place for the past year and a half. As you know, it has worked well. Because our customers are at home, too, everyone's at home. But that's starting to change. And it's going to continue to change and evolve in ways that we don't understand yet.

[Liana Crosby]
Students, faculty, researchers, campus collaborators, donors, alumni, patients, volunteers, faculty, they're starting to return. And teams will need to develop an entirely new way of working to successfully implement telework in their units. I can tell you that I cannot do telework unless my entire unit, my colleagues, work in a collaborative way to figure out coverage for all of the administrative work that we do in the Dean's Office. If we don't support each other and work together, it will fail. And it can also become yet another source of inequity, for those experiencing inequity already. We encourage you to stay flexible as the situation changes. And as Dean Joe mentioned at the very beginning, it's still evolving, and it's going to continue to evolve in ways that we don't understand yet. Support each other and be partners with your colleagues. Alesia, was there anything else that you wanted to add before we open it up to questions?

[Alesia Woods]
I would just like to encourage everyone, all the staff, to partake in creating action plans from the feedback that we receive, you know. I encourage you to be a part of working through these plans, and providing us with ways to make things better in the School of Pharmacy. If I can help in any way, please feel free to reach out to me. But I really encourage everyone to get involved. If you're, you know, not happy, and there's things going on, I really encourage you to speak with your manager and the chair. Joe and I will be making rounds around to the departments and units. And again, I just want to stress this year is unlike any other year, the chancellor and his leadership team are very intentional about these results. They've read some of these comments, and they didn't sit well with them. So they are holding the deans accountable. The action plans will be included in a database, someone externally will monitor us. And so quarterly, we will need to provide feedback on how we are addressing some of your comments. So again, I encourage everyone to be a part of the solution.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So maybe I will take the baton back from Liana, and Alesia. Thank you for reviewing those results. And I guess first I just want to say just a couple of words. And I'm going to really just reinforce what my colleagues just said. The first thing I guess I want to compliment everybody, there were some really wonderful results there. And let's call out the good side. The good side is that in fact, engagement improved really across the board, regardless of the department, regardless of Dean's Office. And I congratulate all of you. All that said, the minute you get too hung up on how great you did, I think we're all missing the point, that there are some people that really disagree that, in fact, they feel like they are engaged and that the institution has trusted and respected their contributions. So I want to repeat exactly what Alesia said to say that this is going to be a much more proactive year. I take responsibility, I think I could have done more in past years to ensure that I follow what each department and the respective Dean's Office units did, to hopefully improve those areas that require the most improvement. I can guarantee you this year, it will be absolute, we will make sure that we do that. But Iwant to say that, as I say that we will in fact do that, I also do want to make sure that I acknowledge that we are so much better than we were in the past. And so let's have a pat on the back there as well as we move forward. So with that, I know there are some questions that have come through. And I'm going to pass the baton at this point to Levi Gadye. And he is going to manage the questions and direct them as he sees fit, Levi.

[Levi Gadye]
Thanks, Joe. So just a reminder that if any other questions come up for the audience during the Q&A, you can still drop them into the Q&A box. And we'll try to get around to that. So the first question is what is the date range for the survey? And I think Eric is going to answer that it's a little tricky to answer.

[Eric Davila]
That would be better to go to Liana and Alesia. Okay.

[Alesia Woods]
The survey, Liana and I started going around talking to departments and units. I think it was, was it March, April? Liana?

[Liana Crosby]
Yes. And the, in terms of which year it evaluates, I believe that evaluates the past 12 months, correct, in terms of the language? Yes.

[Alesia Woods]
And it's around the same time each year. They range in terms of when we take the survey.

[Joe Guglielmo]
This is Joe so both Liana and Alesia my understand is I think the question is exactly when was the survey filled out? I believe it was what you said, March and April. Right?

[Alesia Woods]
Correct. Thank you. Yes, sorry.

[Levi Gadye]
Great. Alright, so the next question is, will employ will the employees that can do their job 100% remotely be allowed to continue working remotely 100%? I guess Liana if you want to answer that if that's possible.

[Joe Guglielmo]
I think that would be unfair to have Liana. I think I have to answer that. Okay. And the answer is a definite maybe, that is the answer. Because it's those kinds of questions that we're struggling with, to be honest. And and my own answer would be, it is possible that considering that the best work by this individual, considering the scope of activity is performed the best completely remotely, it is possible some people we would allow to do that. But it would be a case by case basis, that would not be the norm. There's something to be said for getting together with people ever so often, I don't need to explain that to this group. But so the answer is, it's possible that that, in fact, could take place. But this is quite preliminary, to be able to say for sure, so that's why I facetiously said, a definite maybe because I've probably is the best answer we can get.

[Alesia Woods]
And one of the things I'd like to add is HR met with control points. And they've asked us to look at the job needs, to look at the business needs, and let that drive us as well. So if a particular job is really you know, there's no engagement, and it's, you know, someone can, an individual can work remotely at 100%, that would be a possibility. But we would need to treat each job families, each position very similar is what they're encouraging us to do.

[Levi Gadye]
Alright, thanks Alesia.

[Eric Davila]
I'll just hold on, I'm just gonna add a plug for the Dean's Office, we're having a town hall tomorrow, which should be on your calendar for Dean's Office staff. And for the rest of the three departments, you know, just be aware that your departments will be rolling out plans in their own way.

[Levi Gadye]
All right. So there are no more questions. But there is one more comment. Someone commented that all the unionized staff did receive their raises. I don't know if any of the panelists want to connect that to some of the survey results? That's the last one.

[Joe Guglielmo]
Alesia, I don't know if you have, I don't know what to say to that. Say thank you for letting me know.

[Alesia Woods]
Yes, thank you for letting me know. And I, I do believe that the merits for bi-weekly employees were keyed in and employees should have received that already. And that for the monthly employees, it will be on the first. So HR said that everything was successful. So I think everyone that's due an increase should be receiving it.

[Joe Guglielmo]
So I guess that's back to me, we're gonna close, there's no reason for us to extend this to the bitter end. But I do want to make a comment here. And the intent of these town halls has been an exchange of information. And I believe that that has taken place again today. I will say if there was an underlying theme under that is the following. I there is little doubt that everybody the rank and file of this school matter, their comments, their feelings, their input is valued. We fully admit that we could do a lot better and some units require some more attention than others. And it will be our responsibility to seriously look at that. But I want to say that the message back to all of you is that the Gallup results are they really are valuable, it's something you cannot ignore. And I think it's going to be something that will be particularly action oriented. But much like I think Liana particularly said, if you didn't feel like you got your message adequately to us. Do it any way you'd like, it could be anonymous emails, or it could be non anonymous, you come to whomever you feel is a safe harbor. And please do let us know your thoughts.

[Joe Guglielmo]
And within that, back to this inevitable hybrid model that we're going to use in the future. Precisely we don't know yet. I want to say again, it's the same thing. The engagement and the input of rank and file is absolutely vital. We'll have to make decisions ultimately a little bit top down, but boy, not until we've included the rank and files input so that we have the best possible model we can. But even when we do determine that we have the best possible model. I think we all believe it'll only be that best model at that moment in time. And as things move forward with COVID it could and will change again. So I'm going to close at this point saying thank you to everybody for going to the results. I'll close, will that PowerPoint be available Liana and Alesia yet? So could you let us know? How will that be? Will it be in a box or something? How will you do that? Because I would like everybody to be able to look at those results, to look at it question by question to look at their own individual unit and how it improved or did not improve? Because it'll get everybody thinking on the inevitable action plan that we need to move forward over the course of this year. So where will they be able to find this, Liana and Alicia?

[Alesia Woods]
I'm thinking and maybe you know, correct me, because each department manager has to sit down and go over the results. Maybe the best way would be first to send this to them and let them just send it out to their staff and meet with them and discuss it is that? Or do we want to do it just a mass email out to everyone?

[Joe Guglielmo]
Liana.

[Liana Crosby]
So the results of each of the departments are actually accessible to the department managers and the department chairs so they will be able to pull reports for their own units. In terms of the slides presented today, I think Eric will be able to let us know how that gets presented, it's certainly going to be in the recording, which will be sent out. But Eric, do you also post the slides separately?

[Eric Davila]
We usually don't. But it's possible

[Joe Guglielmo]
I would like them to be, for this time, for complete transparency. I would like this to be available to anybody that would like to look very carefully at the comments that were made, as well as the scores. So more to come on that, we'll let everybody know where that will be. And I'll defer to Eric on that. So with that we're about 15 minutes early, which is okay, I'm sure. And thank you all for the engagement here and for all the support that you continue to provide all of us. Anyway, have a great rest of your afternoon.

[Alesia Woods]
Bye everyone. Thank you