As the COVID crisis continues, we are learning more about how our city government staff in Kansas City, Missouri is responding to our emergency telecommuting policy. In a previous post, we outlined our process for deploying a survey to hundreds of employees who found themselves suddenly working from home. Based on lessons learned from administering and analyzing that first survey, DataKC has collaborated with management staff to better define telework procedures and understand ongoing needs of employees.
Evolving Process Design
- Surveys are being sent every other week while the city’s stay-at-home orders are in effect.
- Each survey will have a balanced mix of repeated questions with several new questions that capture our evolving information and data needs.
- Questions currently fall into three topic areas — technology and communications (topics asked about on the first survey) and work culture. The work culture questions are new and will help us understand how connected employees feel to their teams and supervisors while working from home.
- The surveys will each only take eight to twelve minutes in order to maintain a high response rate.
- The audience for the survey results was not fully defined at first, but quickly became a cross-departmental bi-weekly COVID Response Team convened by the City Manager. Moving forward, analysis from each survey will be specifically tailored to this group, which includes staff from Human Resources, Information Technology, Law and Communications.
New surveys every other week will help us capture the perceptions of newly registered teleworking employees, along with trends across time as employees adjust to telecommuting.
New Survey Kickoff
Our second employee telecommuting survey represented the kickoff of this new and ongoing process. As of April 8, the city had roughly five hundred employees registered to work from home. Sixty-six percent of these registered employees took the second telecommuting survey.
Second Survey Results:
- 81% of employees are satisfied working from home
- 72% of employees feel connected or very connected to their colleagues and 80% feel connected with their supervisor
- 81% of employees are satisfied with the City’s communications to employees about resources for working from home and communication about Covid19.
- Compared to the first survey, there was a 25% increase in the number of employees who have used video chat with co-workers and supervisor while working from home (58%)
- New survey question asked reasons why employees are not using video chat; “my supervisor does not require it” was the number one reason…which brings us to the next steps…
Preview of Survey Three:
- New questions will be added to the survey this week to help understand the needs of supervisors.
- New questions on employee productivity at home will also be added
- Survey responses will be used to help inform conversations about telecommuting policies and programs moving forward from this crisis time period.
Closing thoughts:
Government is not known for being agile, but this global event has forced us to make a massive and rapid pivot away from an exclusively physical work environment. Our employees are signaling that a work from home arrangement, at least in the short term, is working for them. More data will be needed to make long-term decisions about the future of telework for city employees. It’s our hope in DataKC that the effort put into this survey administration will prove to be vital in those policy conversations both in our own organization and more broadly.
DataKC
Thanks to Julie Steenson
