On Monday, Sept. 26, the 2016 King County Employee Survey will launch, giving the County an opportunity to hear from employees about how we can better serve our customers and make King County a better place to work. In 2015, more than 7,500 employees participated in the employee survey. Since then, more than 230 action plans have been created to address the issues you raised and the major themes that emerged: 1. Growth and development Launched an Employee Resource Center to provide resources like resume building, mock interviews and training plans to… Read More

Top ideas from the 9/15 training: Discuss w/team the goals of the survey and its ability to create change incrementally. Schedule a time for work group to take the survey. Serve food and beverages Paper survey – work site meeting time. Online – outlook calendar meeting. Be clear about using work time. These were not the top scoring ideas from the training, but interesting enough to share: Explain to the employee how important the survey is, share results from last year and the timeline of how involved the county is in gathering… Read More

Here are some  ideas for engagement from the 9/8 training: Give staff lunch on me (supervisor) if work group has 100% participation Raffle Prizes Incentivize them with a special raffle prize every week for those who have completed the survey. The earlier you do it, the more chances you have to win.

It’s important for employees to have a strong work-life balance. Doing so can reduce stress and significantly decrease other health risks in a person’s life. It also allows employees to get more satisfaction out of doing their job, making the work more meaningful and effective. With this in mind, one section in the Department of Executive Services decided to use the results from the 2015 Employee Survey as a turning point to tackle an ongoing issue –  telecommuting. Carmel Call, the Director of the Business Resource Center (BRC), explains that the topic… Read More

Some more great ideas from the 9/6 training! Completing the survey automatically enters you into a drawing for a cool prize. Create a friendly competition between work groups in the division. Give a “golden ticket” for some fun event (root beer float party? Museum of Flight?) in exchange for completed survey. Drawing for prizes for those completing the survey. Let employees put a dot on an anonymous board when they take it to visually show how many have taken it — fill up the bucket!

King County’s Public Health employees, like many County employees, are on the frontline of providing critical services to help residents live longer, healthier lives. People join Public Health because they want to help other people.  Public Health has a wide range of customers – ranging from restaurant diners to people in medical distress who call 9-1-1 to our county’s most vulnerable residents who face barriers due to poverty, race, homeless status, gender, or limited English proficiency. So when the 2015 Employee Survey launched last September, leaders at Public Health saw an opportunity… Read More

We had a really fun group Thursday that came up with some great ideas to generate excitement about taking the survey. Here were some of their top ideas: Share results of last year’s “One Thing” effort at staff meeting — then end staff meeting early so people can take the 2016 survey. When participation hits 100% – pizza lunch with gift drawing! For field staff incentivizing completing surveys via rewards, for example if the group achieves over 75% they get something or provide overtime/time to complete the survey. Elect an employee survey… Read More

By Karla Clark, KCIT, EEC Member   At some point in our career we ask ourselves questions like, “Is this it for me?” or “I want to do more but where do I start?”  Last week, KCIT employees had a chance to get those questions and many more answered at the first Day of Discovery. The Day of Discovery was an all-day event on the first floor of the Chinook Building, sponsored by the KCIT Employee Engagement Committee (EEC).  With more than 100 KCIT employees in attendance, it was by all accounts, a… Read More

Today we started our series of engagement survey orientation trainings. At the very end we did a brainstorm exercise to generate ideas for boosting participation in this year’s survey. Our response rate last year as 60% which is good enough to make the data valid, but we’d like to see more people participate. For the brainstorm exercise we asked people to write an idea on an index card and then exchange cards 3 times with people in the room anonymously rating each idea on a scale from 1 – 5 where 5… Read More