WM Employees Like Workplace, But Unhappy With Pay

By Amber Lester Kennedy Friday, February 04, 2011

The College of William and Mary’s employees believe the college is well run, their workplace is safe and are comfortable talking openly with supervisors. They are not, however, satisfied with their pay.

Those revelations came from the results of a climate study conducted in August by the Office of Human Resources. The results were shared at Board of Visitors meetings on Thursday. The college conducted a similar study in 2007 for the first time in institutional memory.

The survey asked classified, hourly, professional and faculty employees how they felt about compensation and benefits, training and resources, communications, management and job satisfaction. The survey questions were posed to employees at both the William and Mary campus and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

After four years with no raises, only 20 percent of respondents said they believe their pay has increased in line with their increased responsibilities. Just twelve percent of survey takers said they believed their pay was comparable to their peers working outside of William and Mary. More employees understand how their pay is determined, however; 57 percent of respondents said they understood, compared to 51 percent in 2007.

“State employees have not received a raise since November 2007 and the impact of that reality shows in the survey’s results on workers compensation,” said Anna Martin, vice president for administration. “When you consider that fact, to hear more than 90 percent say they enjoy working at the college is a powerful reminder of the great devotion our employees have to William and Mary.”

More than 90 percent of employees agreed that overall, their department is a good place to work, and 92 percent believe their workplace is safe.

The study also found that 78 percent of respondents believe the college is well-run, compared to 61 percent in 2007. Sixty-seven percent said they believe the college cares about its employees and treats them fairly, up from 55 percent in 2007. Eighty-three percent of employees said they feel comfortable talking openly with coworkers and their supervisor about their department’s goals and ways to improve what they do, compared to 65 percent in 2007.

Of the college’s 1,596 eligible employees, 1,108 participated in the survey and 847 completed it. In her presentation to the board, Martin noted some anomalies in the data. Human Resources noted that in some places, there were more respondents than number of eligible employees; it was determined that some instructional faculty had mistakenly taken a survey and it was not possible to separate their data from research faculty because they answered the questions anonymously. She said the college decided to report the results despite the anomalies because it still contains valuable information.

The complete survey results are available here.