Faculty and Staff Engagement

Mason's Faculty & Staff Engagement and Organizational Development & Learning teams offer a variety of workshops, cohort programs, and custom trainings to support leadership and/or career development, performance management, and more. View the training and professional development pages to find programs that best suit your needs. 

Faculty and staff engagement begins with the first day of employment and can be positively affected by the employee’s supervisor. The Supervisor Checklist for Onboarding New Employees provides supervisors with a list of suggested activities and interactions that should take place before the employee arrives, on their first day, and within the first 30 days.    

Employee engagement is an ongoing, daily, monthly, and yearly process that continues through all phases of an employee’s lifecycle. Consider using the following engagement strategies on a daily basis: 

• Develop relationships beyond the transactional. 
• Take the time to promote a relationship and teambuilding culture. 
•  Support faculty and staff well-being. 
•  Promote collaboration.
• Confirm that expectations are clear. 
• Acknowledge the progress of onsite and remote employees, providing recognition and praise.
• Support career and professional development. 
• Provide clear, consistent and regular communication. 
• Use a variety of communication methods to meet the needs of all employees, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom, emails, 1:1 meetings, etc.  
• During meetings, allow for discussion, feedback, relationship and collaboration. Move beyond one-way meetings and allow for two-way communication. 
• Organize work based on Gallup StrengthsFinder results. Have all individuals take the StrengthsFinder assessment, then discuss results with the entire team. Identify areas where strengths overlap and/or complement each other. Mason’s Organizational Learning and Development team (hrlearn@gmu.edu) is available to assist and facilitate Strength's conversations, with leaders and teams. 
• Encourage peer feedback. 

According to Gallup, managers and their employees having meaningful, authentic, genuine, and focused discussions for only 15-30 minutes per week have a significant impact on employee engagement.  The following outlines a 30-minute meaningful conversation, providing a balanced relationship and task-oriented approach to employee check-ins: 

• Well-being (5 minutes): Take the time to check-in with the employee, focusing on them as a whole person.  Be present, listen intently, and be aware of non-verbal cues. 

Driving questions: How are you?  How is life?  

• Successes (10 min): Recognize and appreciate the employee’s successes.  Discover their workplace appreciation language  and regularly praise in those ways.  Focus on an employee’s strengths. 

Driving questions: What’s going well?  What successes have you had? 

• Challenges (10 min): Minimize focus on employee weaknesses.  Avoid trying to solve the problem immediately or jumping to conclusions on the challenge. 

Driving questions: What challenges are you experiencing?  How can I help? 

• Priorities (5 min): Listen to employee priorities and jointly determine final priorities which will positively impact the unit. 

Driving questions: What upcoming tasks/priorities do you have?  What resources and/or clarity do you need to be successful? 

Every employee is unique. By identifying your employees’ strengths, you can align work tasks that complement strengths and individualize well-being, feedback, and performance conversations.   

Mason partners with Gallup to foster a Strengths-based culture on our campuses. Supervisors are encouraged to have each employee complete their Strengths assessment and explore complementary strengths as a team. The Organizational Development and Learning team (hrlearn@gmu.edu) can help facilitate a strengths discovery session for your team. 

According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being, there are five essential elements to supporting an employee: protection from harm, connection and community, work-life harmony, mattering at work, and opportunity for growth. Guided by this framework, Mason supervisors and unit leaders can support employee mental health and well-being through the following actions: 

• Create cultures of inclusion and belonging 
• Cultivate trusted relationships 
• Foster collaboration and teamwork 
• Prioritize physical and psychological safety 
• Provide autonomy over how work is done 
• Respect boundaries between work and non-work time 
• Engage workers in workplace decisions 
• Build a culture of gratitude and recognition 
• Connect individual work with organizational mission 
• Offer quality training, education, and mentoring 
• Foster clear, equitable pathways for career advancement 
• Ensure relevant, reciprocal feedback 

Project Connect

ProjectConnect helps faculty and staff build stronger community and enhance workplace well- being at Mason. Faculty and staff who participate in ProjectConnect will meet in groups of 4 to 6 participants over the course of five 1-hour sessions and engage in a series of thought-provoking questions and fun activities. 

ProjectConnect is a great fit for faculty and staff who are:  

• Community-builders who want to improve the workplace well-being at Mason  
• Committed to participating in deeper, more interesting conversations  
• New employees or employees want to expand their social circle at work  
• Interested in getting to know colleagues in a small-group setting (4 to 6 participants)  
• Willing to commit to all session dates 

The performance management process is a collaborative partnership between an employee and their supervisor. It is a year-round process of defining expectations, maintaining open communication, providing continuous coaching and feedback, linking goals to organizational needs, and evaluating performance. At a minimum of once per year, this documented process will formally assess and rate the employee’s performance. 

Visit the Performance Management and Evaluation page to learn more. 

Stay and Thrive Interview Template

Purpose: George Mason University is dedicated to creating and providing an inclusive work environment, fulfilling work experience, and engaged culture where faculty and staff feel valued and appreciated.  Stay and thrive interviews are a means to guide casual, yet meaningful, conversation around sense of belonging, motivation to stay at Mason, and/or factors in an employee’s decision to leave the university.  

Stay and Thrive Interview Guidelines: Stay and thrive interviews will take between 30-45 minutes and will provide supervisors with a clear understanding of an employee’s sense of connection and belonging at Mason.  Supervisors should listen intently, offering employees an opportunity to address areas beyond what is included on the form.  Following the interview, supervisors are encouraged to use the stay interview feedback for continuous improvement. 

Stay interviews are treated as confidential and will not become part of an employee’s official personnel file.  Feedback from the Stay and Thrive interview should be used to help analyze and improve faculty and staff engagement and satisfaction at Mason.  Feedback from the stay and thrive conversations will not be sent to Human Resources.