Vancouver city employees recently completed an engagement survey. And the results are not good.
The city is dealing with low morale across the board, particularly with their fire department. Things have gotten so bad that results show that only six per cent of respondents have confidence in Fire Chief John McKearney and his management team.
These numbers even came as a shock to City Manager Penny Ballem, who has made it her mission to improve engagement and culture.
“What they told us was that if we were going to embark on this, you need to know the next (survey) in a big complex organization like this one gets worse,” said Ballem.
“We realized if we just boil the ocean for a couple of years we probably won’t get any results. So we had a very focused strategy of what we wanted to work on.”
3,288 city employees filled out the survey last summer, with a response rate of 48 per cent. In 2010, the response rate was slightly higher, at 50 per cent. However, far more firefighters took the chance to be heard, with a response rate around 65 per cent. This was much higher than the 36 per cent rate from 2010.
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