At Hillsboro, every employee's perspective counts.
Hillsboro leaders want to hear from our employees about their workplace experience. The compiled Workplace Climate Survey results and feedback from City employees will drive our strategic planning work (including our mission, our vision, and our goals) and our culture building for the future.
This survey was conducted by the Local Government Workplaces Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help Hillsboro leaders better understand the perspectives of employees on a range of workplace-related topics. It also produces data for academic scholarship on topics that include employee morale and organizational climate.
Survey Results
The City of Hillsboro conducted the Workplace Climate Surveyto give employees the opportunity to share their opinions and help senior leaders understand the City of Hillsboro workplace through their perspective and how it can be improved.
Research
73% of Hillsboro full-time employees and 29% of non-full-time employees completed the survey; nearly 200 City employees participated in focus groups to help interpret the survey data.
The Culture
City employees describe a culture of excellence, responsiveness, and commitment to the community.
Reasons for Staying
90% stay at the City of Hillsboro because they want to have a positive impact on others.
Workplace Relationships
87% say their workplaces are compassionate and supportive.
Burnout
63% feel burnt out, which employees say is due to heavy workloads and short staffing.
Voice & Silence
32% say that they are not asked to provide input on workplace decisions; 42% say that they do not speak up when they have ideas for workplace improvements.
Turnover Intentions
29% are thinking about leaving.
What Employees Want
To see work prioritized to create manageable workloads; to be able to speak up about workplace issues without fearing negative consequences.
What’s Working Well
We are fortunate to work in a city with so many employees throughout the organization who are dedicated to each other and the community. That’s why the survey results indicate eight areas where things are going well. These include:
- Inclusion, where employees feel they belong.
- Social support, when employees support each other in the workplace.
- Teamwork and team climate, the sense that departmental teams work well together.
- Diversity climate, where employees feel like the City decisions are fair and free of demographic biases.
- Psychological safety, where team members feel they can ask coworkers for help and admit mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
- Resources, training, equipment, and time for doing the job.
- Hillsboro values, where employees see the City’s values play out in the workplace.
Areas of Focus
The workplace climate survey identified the top three Citywide issues that will be addressed during our strategic planning process:
Burnout
Department directors and the Executive Leadership Team recognize that, as an organization, we can improve on ensuring work assignments match staff capacity.
As we organize and develop the specific goals in our strategic plan, we will prioritize work and projects as one City, being mindful to not overextend our teams, and taking into account the time and effort required for delivery of core services, projects, plans, and initiatives.
Voice & Silence
We recognize the need to consistently demonstrate teamwork as our core value by gathering more employee input in decision-making at the team, division, and department levels, as well as certain Citywide decisions.
While we have begun to incorporate employee voice in setting our new mission, vision, and values, we will continue to explore ways to ensure employees have a voice in decision-making.
Turnover Intentions
We recognize there are a variety of factors that influence each employee’s decision to stay with an organization.
Maintaining a competitive compensation and benefits packages is ONE of the things that our employees value. To that end, we will be updating the classification and compensation program for our non-represented staff and reviewing market data during contract negotiations with our labor partners.
We will continue to strategize ways to minimize employee turnover through the strategic planning process.
Next Steps
A specific goal area (Employee Wellbeing) in the City’s Strategic Plan was developed to identify specific city-wide initiatives in response to the city-wide results. The initiatives were developed by an employee focus group that represented all departments in the City.
Department directors will discuss their department-specific results with their staff and begin triaging areas that can be addressed immediately; other areas will require more extensive resources to address effectively. For example, employees in a significant number of departments reported not feeling valued by the City and experiencing citizen incivility, when community members are disrespectful to City of Hillsboro employees, and workplace incivility, when coworkers are disrespectful to each other at work.
In the future, we will conduct another survey to track our progress in responding to the concerns raised by employees.
View All Workplace Climate Survey Results.
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