Faculty and Staff Experience Survey

Help create a workplace that better understands, creates space for, and engages in inclusion and belonging practices  

Mason needs to be an environment that includes everyone and where everyone belongs. Your input will help create a workplace that better understands, creates space for, and engages in inclusion and belonging practices. 

A work environment that makes a conscious effort to include and make everyone belong is an environment that allows, encourages, and creates a space for people to grow professionally and personally.  

When everyone is consciously included and belongs, we connect with each other and our roles, which expands and deepens the impact and meaning of our work. 

Diversity includes the spectrum of all races, ethnicities, neurodiversities, differing abilities, sexual orientations, gender identities, political affiliations, cultures, religious practices, and thought. 

Share your well-being needs in a pandemic-altered workplace  

We're all working in a new work landscape. Your feedback helps shape the workplace to meet this new environment. 

Co-create an environment where you can continue to make a meaningful impact at Mason 

Mason’s mission is to support students first. But that’s only possible if faculty and staff feel connected with their work and role. Share with us how your department/unit can co-create an environment that makes you feel engaged so you can continue to make a meaningful impact on our students. 

See and be part of actionable plans and results because of your response  

Mason's leadership is committed to using this data to inform decision-making and as metrics of success in their strategic planning. This data will be used to help inform how departments and units can foster meaningful and sustainable change that creates a work environment where everyone can thrive. 

The Faculty and Staff Experience Survey will launch on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 and will be open for approximately three weeks.

Every employee will receive an email invitation from Gallup with a unique link to the survey. Be on the lookout for this email invitation and reminders! 

All of Mason's employees are invited to participate in the survey. This includes I/R faculty, adjunct faculty, classified staff, A/P faculty, wage employees, and student and graduate student employees.

In partnership with Faculty Senate, the Faculty Evaluation of Administrators (FEA) will be launched with the FSE survey. After completing the FSE questions, I/R faculty will advance to the FEA portion of the assessment.

Mason has contracted with Gallup to serve as our third-party survey vendor. 

Gallup’s employee engagement science and history researching the topic are unmatched. They have been studying employee engagement (including the best way to measure it) and performance for over 75 years. Gallup is an industry leader in terms of understanding what employees want and need to thrive in their workplace. They have studied over 2.7 million employees across 100,000+ teams. 

Gallup has more than 1,000 clients measuring engagement each year, including over 120,000 responses from higher ed faculty and staff within their employee engagement database. 

In partnering with Gallup, Mason will have access to their robust library of action planning materials to address each of our areas of concern. Additionally, we will be able to benchmark Mason against other institutions of higher ed and local industries. 

The design of the survey took several factors and goals of the university into consideration along with the wealth of research and experience that Gallup has in survey design and administration. The foundation of the survey is Gallup’s Q12, a research-based set of questions designed to measure employee engagement. In collaboration with Gallup, Mason’s team added questions aligned with the university’s goals, priority, and culture.   

The 2022 Faculty and Staff Experience Survey was developed, in coordination with Gallup, by the Faculty and Staff Experience committee which included representatives from across Mason’s community.  Gallup stakeholder interviews provided the committee with insight on goals and objectives of the survey. 

The 2024 iteration of the survey closely parallels the 2022 version, with slight adjustments based on the President’s goals and Mason’s 2023 Strategic Direction.  

Core Implementation Team 

The Faculty & Staff Experience Committee identified a smaller team of individuals within their membership to serve as the Core Implementation Team for the Faculty & Staff Experience Survey. This team has been meeting bi-weekly throughout fall 2021 and spring 2022 to ensure the timely administration of this initiative. In these regular meetings with Gallup representatives, the team identified key stakeholders, developed the survey items and communication plans, and handled the logistics for the survey administration. 

Mason has collaborated with Gallup to design a survey that will measure a variety of faculty and staff experiences. 

Engagement (Gallup's  Q12)

Gallup’s 12 key engagement questions will help Mason measure engagement in your work life. 

Well-Being 

Mason is dedicated to creating an environment where you can thrive.

Culture of Belonging

The Culture of Inclusion questions will measure your experience with Mason as a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. 

Flexible and Remote Work 

With the shift to a hybrid work environment, the survey will help us to better understand how the transition has impacted your work life and connection to university culture.

Mason will use this data to: 

• Identify and celebrate areas of success across Mason and among workgroups/divisions 
• Identify areas of opportunity across Mason and among workgroups/divisions 
• Provide guidance on areas of growth

Leaders will have access to Gallup's Action Planning tools that provide: 

• Questions that help managers/leaders focus on areas of action 
• Learning opportunities for each survey construct 
• Tips and tricks to help you follow through with your workgroup/division 

Learn more about the Action Planning phase at Mason. 

Gallup will send an email directly to you with a unique link to complete the survey. The survey is available from April 3-April 23, 2004.