Thank you for taking a few minutes to read this message about an important survey that affects ongoing efforts here at UTC to improve employees’ health, safety, and well-being.

As you hopefully have heard, there are efforts being made across campus to improve our focus within UTC on Total Organizational Health. This means directing more attention to protecting and promoting health, safety, and well-being for all employees. It also means focusing on what we need to do to keep our university adaptable and resilient. Earlier this year, I was asked by our Chancellor to lead this initiative for our campus and I am sending you this message to provide some more information about the recently announced staff survey managed by the McLean company. Please note that this survey is only for staff employees here at UTC (not for faculty).

You have already received some general information about this survey in an email from our UT system president, Randy Boyd, and all staff members should have received at least one additional notification by now that included a link to access this survey. Additional reminder emails will be sent as the survey response window stays open over the next few weeks. Those emails provide good information about what this survey is and how you can access it.

Here is some more information about why this McLean survey is important to our ongoing Total Organizational Health efforts at UTC. This survey is sent to all staff employees throughout the UT system and the final reports delivered back to our campus tell us how you feel about working at UTC and within the UT system more generally. Most questions in this survey measure your attitudes and feelings about working at UTC, and many of these questions are directly connected to aspects of the ongoing Total Organizational Health initiative. The information we can gather from this survey helps us to keep our Total Organizational Health efforts moving in a direction that best benefits you as UTC staff employees.

Here are a few additional details to note:

1) As you work through this survey, please be sure to carefully read and follow all instructions – this will help to make sure that you are responding to questions as fully and accurately as you can.

2) Please respond to the items in this survey based on how you are feeling about your work experiences at UTC now, considering current or recent experiences within the past few months. Responding from this frame of mind and perspective will allow us to learn if efforts to improve health, safety, and well-being on campus are working or need to be adjusted.

3) The data gathered through this survey are reported back to UTC only in an aggregated or group-level form (your personal identity is not linked to the data returned to our campus). These group-level reports allow us to understand strengths and challenges affecting different UTC divisions and areas within these divisions, but only if sufficient numbers of our staff workforce respond.

4) It is your choice whether you respond to this survey or not. Just please remember that we cannot learn from you or hear your voice on these topics if you choose not to respond.

If you have any questions or concerns about how we make use of data from this survey here at UTC, please speak with your supervisor(s) or feel free to reach out to me directly at [log in to unmask]. Thank you again for taking time to respond to this survey within the next couple of weeks (ideally by September 30).

Sincerely,

Chris Cunningham

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Christopher J. L. Cunningham, PhD

Guerry Professor and UC Foundation Professor

Industrial-Organizational and Occupational Health Psychology

Department of Psychology

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga