Employee Engagement Survey Frequently Asked Questions

Algonquin College is committed to being one of the best employers in Canada. To achieve this goal, we need feedback from all employees about what we’re doing well – and what requires further attention.

The Employee Engagement Survey included a mix of quantitative (scaled responses) and qualitative (open-ended) questions. Examples include questions about job satisfaction, work-life balance, career growth opportunities, relationships with colleagues and supervisors, and overall organizational culture.

The survey was sent to all active Algonquin College employees on March 20th, 2023 and was open until 11:59 p.m. April 19th, 2023.

Metrics@Work emerged from Brock University’s Workplace Health Research Lab (WHRL) in September, 2007 after 8 years at Brock (i.e., established in 1999) – approaching 20 years of operations. Metrics@Work, since 1999, has carried over 450 employee engagement surveys. Four of our staff have been involved in 100’s of those projects. They are proud of the high level of expertise and knowledge in their core team, each bringing a skill sets to the project to provide the highest possible level of customer service and support.

Metrics@Works offers a database with over 250,000 respondents – 80% based on Canadian public sector organizations.

Metrics@Work is well positioned to assist Algonquin College to complete our engagement survey and support the building of trust and confidence to help Algonquin College use the results to create more engaging work environments.

To ensure full confidentiality, employees completing the web survey will be invited by Metrics@Work to complete the survey on-line directly through an external, secure Canadian based website set up by Metrics@Work.

To ensure anonymity of your responses, Algonquin College will only receive aggregated group data – not individual responses. Metrics@Work will only provide reports for groups with greater than 10 employees and at least 10 respondents must participate for larger groups. No groups can be reported on in any way that would violate this rule or identify any individual response. Metrics@Work has created its own proprietary report creation program specifically fitted to the model of employee engagement.

Metrics@Work follows the principles outlined in the Tri-Council Policy Statement: “Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans,” to maintain confidentiality of your responses.

Survey results are analyzed to identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement within the organization. This data can help inform decision-making, prioritize initiatives, and develop action plans to enhance employee engagement and address specific concerns.

There will be action planning initiatives at both the organizational and departmental level after the 2023 Employee Engagement Survey results are shared College-wide at the September 13th, 2023 hybrid event. You can register for the event here as of September 1st, 2023.

The entire College community is invited to a dedicated hybrid event on Wednesday, September 13th, 2023 to review the results from the survey.

You can register for the event here as of September 1st, 2023.

Employee engagement is crucial because engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and likely to stay with the organization. High engagement levels can lead to increased job satisfaction, better teamwork, and ultimately, improved organizational performance.

Employee engagement is an overall sense of being energized by and passionate about one’s work and dedication towards one’s workplace.

For Metrics@Work methodology and terminology, please see the document Metrics@Work Methodology.

Survey questions were reviewed and approved by the Employee Engagement Collaboration Team, Learning and Teaching Services, and the College Academic Council. As part of our effort in continuous process improvement we will look for ways to enhance the vetting process to validate questions being asked in future surveys.

At this time the survey data will not be integrated with other sources due to complexity and the sensitivity of the data. This will be reviewed prior to the next survey period.

In terms of organization-wide initiatives, the College taking a different approach from 2019, where results were tabled and a cross-College team was formed to provide recommendations for action. This year we will be tabling the focus areas up front. When looking at the data, including our results from the 2021 Pulse survey, from 2019 fulsome Engagement survey, and the Final Report and recommendations from the Engagement Collaboration Team, similar themes continue to be prevalent.

For 2023, the Employee Engagement Collaboration Team will be leveraged as a forum to provide input into organizational-wide initiatives. Also, we will be taking a very robust approach to actioning the data within departmental areas. This includes a distribution of reports, access to an online portal to view results and resources (e.g., Employee Engagement Toolkit), and action plan tracking.

Our plan was to launch the Employee Engagement Survey in January 2023. However in 2023 the College became a part of the Federal Contractors Program which requires an Equity Census to be completed. Due to this competing timeline, the Employee Engagement Survey was pushed to be launched on March 20, 2023 and remained open until April 19, 2023 to solicit a higher response rate. Our third-party vendor, Metrics@Work, needed time to review and analyze the information as well as produce reports. A decision was made that as we approached the late Spring semester that it would be optimal to release the results in September which would allow areas to engage in action planning following the release.

The response rate was 63.9% with 2,321 surveys received.

• Academic (1,212)
• Support (789)
• Administrative (266)
• Student / Co-Op (54)

The overall engagement score (average of all drivers) was 72.4%.

Note: this score does not include the Psychological Health and Safety questions responses as they are new and reported on separately.

The overall grand driver score is calculated by averaging the scores of all 43 drivers. This score does not include the Psychological Health and Safety questions, as these were new and are reported on separately.

For more information on how scores were calculated as well as survey and report terminology, see Metrics@Work Methodology.