Transcript: Listening to Lead: How Surveys Enhance Culture in Christian Higher Education // Robert Wachter, Cary Humphries, Best Christian Workplaces

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Listening to Lead: How Surveys Enhance Culture in Christian Higher Education“

November 13, 2024

Robert Wachter and Cary Humphries

Intro: Welcome to this special edition of the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. And in this episode two of Best Christian Workplaces’ top leaders dive into the state of the Christian workplace, with a special focus on Christian higher education. Discover why this sector faces unique challenges in employee engagement and culture, and hear about the actionable insights and strategies that are helping universities move from unhealthy to flourishing. And if you're passionate about transforming your institution's culture, this episode is packed with data-driven solutions you won't want to miss.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing. And I’m passionate about equipping Christian leaders like you to cultivate engaged, flourishing workplaces.

Today I’m delighted to welcome Robert Wachter, BCW’s global marketing director, and Cary Humphries, BCW’s consulting director, to the podcast as they discuss the health of the state of the Christian workplace in Christian higher education. Even if you aren't working in a Christian college or university, I know you're going to benefit from this helpful information.

A couple of key points that you'll pick up in this podcast is that you'll hear actionable insights for Christian higher education. You'll discover the latest data on the state of employee engagement in Christian higher ed, including how it's uniquely challenging and how to begin making improvements in your institution's culture. They also cover proven strategies for building a flourishing culture, including the practical steps for improving leadership, communication, and mission alignment. These are critical drivers that lead to healthier, more engaged workplaces in Christian higher ed. And then, finally, an exclusive insight into the new Adjunct Professor Engagement Survey. For the first time, explore how the newly launched Adjunct Professor Survey is helping universities better understand and support this essential group, providing a roadmap for strengthening your institution's culture from every angle.

I know you're going to love this conversation between Robert Wachter and Cary Humphries.

Robert Wachter: What we've done is we've aggregated our data, and we've looked at not just what's going on with individual organizations that we call ministry partners, but putting them together into sectors, and what's the health of our sectors? And in those findings, you'll see that on the report, a couple of things stood out about higher-education sector. One is, is that higher education came in with the lowest health score of all of our sectors. So all sectors combined came in at a 4.06 on our five-point Likert scale; 4.0 and higher is considered healthy; 4.25 and higher is considered flourishing. So on average, our ministry partners came in at a 4.06. And so higher ed was the lowest at a 3.82.

Another interesting piece of that, 3.82, it was the only sector that came in unhealthy. So all of our other sectors, which would include K through 12 Christian schools, Christian-led businesses, rescue missions, churches, parachurches and missions, family services were all in the healthy. But higher ed was the only unhealthy.

And also, part of that leads to what we call engagement levels, or percentages of engaged employees. And higher ed also came in with the lowest level of percentage of engaged employees at 44%, whereas all sectors combined is 58%. So 44% of higher-ed employees are engaged. The only sector that came in less than half as well, Cary.

So what I thought, with your expertise and experience working in higher ed, Cary, why is this happening, is my question. What is it about the higher-education sector, colleges and universities, that makes it particularly challenging to have the lowest scores among our sectors and lowest levels of engagement? So, I'd love to just kind of kick it over to you, Cary. What are some of your initial thoughts on what's going on with that environment that makes it more challenging for driving engagement?

Cary Humphries: Yeah. Thanks, Rob.

You know, one thing, just to put it in perspective a little bit, I think Gallup said in their spring-release data that a third, actually 30% coming out of Covid, a little lower, 30% of the global workforce was engaged.

Robert: Yeah.

Cary: Defined, I think loosely similarly to ours, that they're able to respond degree or higher to scientifically verified engagement questions, 30%. So while higher ed is at 44%, 14 points higher than the global average for workplaces, we're thinking Christian higher ed surveyed by BCW, an organization who says, you know, we're sort of, you say, their all sectors 58% engaged, nearly twice what Gallup says they see globally. And so it is troubling that higher ed is at the 44th percentile and raises the question, why is that?, as you point out.

And I think there's a number of factors that come into play here. And as you said earlier, we've seen a number of organizations move from quite unhealthy, or very early in the Likert scale journey of engagement, 3.50s, 3.60s, up into 4.1, 4.6, 4.12, we've had organizations survey with us in the flourishing zone in higher ed, but solidly healthy, even 4.10, 4.12, is a remarkable score in the higher-ed space today. Why would that be?

One thing at play here is just the tension that exists between faculty and administration and staff in Christian higher ed and in higher ed generally. Another issue—when I say that tension, a tension shows up, Rob, in places like shared governance. So you have faculty who feel a sense of ownership to the mission and delivery of education services to students, and sometimes even feel like administration is acting too much like the single owner, where faculty feel like a little bit of a sense of this is my place. And that creates some tension because if decisions are made that they don't support or that they weren't involved in, they might have some anxiety about that. They see donors interested in buildings and things that surround events, sometimes more than classroom activity, and that can create some resentment that produces tension.

As you know, Rob is a pastor and also in your work with us as the global marketing director, the world is wrestling through what have long been universal truths. And so our universities are sort of the frontlines of some of those battles around human sexuality and different things. And they create tensions that, how do we handle this? Are we welcoming to students? Are we welcoming to faculty who want to be welcoming to students? And what is our mission, and what does our denomination or board say about those things? And these produce some unique tensions to higher ed that probably don't exist in some of the other sectors.

Robert: Right, right. So it sounds like there’s—

Cary: Not the same, at least. They don't exist the same.

Robert: Right, right. Not the same. So there's some internal kind of structural oriented elements that contribute to this, as well as external societal sort of social—

Cary: Yes.

Robert: —variables that impact higher ed more than other sectors. That makes a lot of sense.

Cary: Yeah. For example, that would be K through 12 tends to be a little more closely held. Now, you’ve got a board that is deeply involved, and they've set values and beliefs and standards and vision and mission. And if members of the team don't endorse those, they don't stay, generally—

Robert: Right, right.

Cary: —where higher ed’s a little more complex in that way. You can get people with longer service, sometimes tenure, sometimes just respected, longer service, and that creates a different nuance than it does in some of the more closely held organizations like businesses or churches or K through 12.

Robert: Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Yeah.

And you mentioned about some of the data from Gallup, which is encouraging, that even though 44% might not feel like the best level of engagement, it is certainly much higher than a lot of the data out there, the aggregate data that that Gallup would show us.

Cary: Yeah.

Robert: So that is encouraging. And it is encouraging to know that these organizations that we've worked have improved as they've surveyed, as they've acted on recommendations, and they've implemented strategies to help move the needle. But it really does work. So you're not left to the devices of these elements without any power or ability to improve things. And that's really encouraging as well.

Cary: Yeah. For sure.

You know, we don't survey non-faith-based higher ed, right? So we're not surveying the University of, you know?

Robert: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yep.

Cary: And yet I would imagine, you know, one of the things we know from our data is that the comp and benefits is not one of the principal drivers. It's higher in higher ed than it is in many other sectors, maybe third to the bottom, where in churches or parachurch and mission-related organizations, it is at the bottom. It is the least-influential driver of engagement. In higher ed, it's higher than that. And I'm guessing in a non-faith-based higher ed, it's probably more important than it is in faith based because people don't enter—

Robert: Yes.

Cary: —Christian colleges and universities seeking the very best pay for their profession.

Robert: Right.

Cary: It's usually if values-aligned decision.

Robert: Right.

Cary: But the fact, you know, I would guess that in non-faith-based higher ed that the engagement scores are lower than the Christian higher ed we survey.

Robert: Yeah, no question. I think we see that across all of our sectors as coming in much higher, obviously. Higher eds are lowest, all of ours are coming in higher than secular workplaces, and the missional alignment, the mission aspect of it is so powerful. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it is promising.

Cary: Yeah.

Robert: You mentioned something about one of our culture drivers, and I looked into our State of the Christian Workplace Report, our 2024 report. By the way, again, go to workplaces.org, and you'll see there's a pop up, and you can download that report. If you haven't checked it out, you'll want to do that and check out this sector and other sectors, and you can get a good glimpse of what's going on collectively with higher ed.

But three things or three drivers, I should say, stand out to me. If you're new to Best Christian Workplaces and some of our lingo, we have identified eight culture drivers. We call it our FLOURISH Model. And those eight drivers we know lead to results in terms of engagement. And as you improve in these drivers, you improve levels of engagement and health score. And so what we saw in the higher-ed sector was a few things. Inspirational leadership. And I'd love you to jump in. I think you've got these numbers.

Cary: Yeah.

Robert: But there's some interesting things there to show with at least three of our drivers that might be helpful to understand why the scores are where they are, and what can higher ed do to make improvements?

Cary: Yeah. Great points, Rob. And it's interesting as well, as I'm getting ready to talk about relative weights analysis and things like factor analysis and work that we do. And it's interesting because we're talking about higher ed today that throughout our existence as an organization, we've always had a Ph.D. candidate from—

Robert: Yes.

Cary: —Seattle Pacific University's organizational industrial psychology department on our team as an employee. And for many years the leader of that department, Rob McKenna, of course, who you know and many of our listeners know, led that department at Seattle Pacific. Rob is now out leading WiLD Leaders, an awesome organization and partner of ours. But that work with Seattle Pacific has helped. We've recently produced a survey-validation document that, you know, they help us constantly prove and refine and strengthen the data underpinning of our tools. But as you point out, inspirational leadership, life-giving work, healthy communication, there's eight drivers of engagement that we focus on. And when we take those eight and we look at the relative weights of each one—so on a scale of 100—what weight do they carry? You know, an eight would be about 12, right? But inspirational leadership is 17, nearly 17 and a half, weighting. And then Christian higher ed had a raw score of 3.77 on a Likert scale. What it tells you is nothing is more important to engagement than leadership. The questions in leadership around trust, around change for the better, momentum, around the organization being well-managed, a number of things around Christian character, openness and honesty, fairness and integrity, compassion, humility, putting Christ first in decisions, those kinds of questions drive a reflection on engagement that is very insightful for university and college presidents and leadership teams as they seek to grow engagement. Same with life-giving work. It’s a very high relative weight of 15.6. And healthy communication, nearly 15, 14.97.

Interestingly, as you just pointed out, the raw score on life-giving work—

Robert: Mm-hmm. It’s higher.

Cary: —that purposeful, is higher, 4.2. Why? Just like you said, people come to the university motivated out of mission. And one of our questions, the mission and goals of my university make me feel my work is important, that question alone is a 4.40 or 4.50 average because, Rob, I remember one time doing some discovery groups. We do follow-up work sometimes with colleges and universities, and this was a Midwest Christian college with several hundred employees. And one of the professors had come from the East Coast. And he said, you know, “I came here looking for a job to this little town in the Midwest. But the mission of our university, our college has become my life mission.” You think, how powerful is that at retaining someone to stay engaged. And even so, that was a person at a discovery group to talk about needed improvement. And so while he wasn't experiencing everything as it could have been, the underpinning was strong.

Robert: Yeah. So the life-giving work, missional alignment is really helping the overall score quite a bit—

Cary: Yeah, yeah.

Robert: —for higher ed. And then you look at healthy communications with a 15, just under a 15% relative weights analysis, which is the third-highest ranked, the raw score is a 3.71, again dropping lower than the other two—

Cary: Yeah. It’s 50 points lower than life-giving work.

Robert: —so something with health. Right. So communication is problematic, it sounds like, for higher ed.

Cary: It is. Well, and when I talk to people about healthy communication, there's five questions that you could call involvement communication questions. Four of them are about the institution. So my university explains the reasons behind decisions, seeks suggestions, acts on suggestions, and involves staff in decisions. Those four, particularly faculty, but everybody, really want to see that happen. They want to be a part of what's going on. And then the fifth question is, in my area, we feel free to voice opinions openly. So sometimes, you know, in the biology department, that might be true. All of us professors in biology, we can share with each other. We can discuss and debate and have conflict. But I don't feel that same level of openness at the university level. They actually get nervous when I start to push boundaries and, you know, and so it's a tension. And healthy communication is one of the—you know, when I think of, well, Steve Mason, the president of LeTourneau University—he’s been on our podcast—they're a certified best Christian workplace that he has self-described as an organization that moved a significant way to get healthy. And no doubt a big part of their journey to healthy was healthy communication, them working hard to make sure that people felt more included, felt listened to, that they created forums for that, that leaders were available for that, those kinds of things.

Robert: Yeah. That's good. If you're listening and you're wondering, how does this work for my school, my college and university that you might work for, the idea is when you have a survey and you survey your employees, you're getting them the micro-level detail for your specific institution. And so although we're talking about these drivers and this data at a macro level, at a sector level, you really don't know what's happening within your organization unless you do a survey and you hear from your employees and you get that data specific to your institution. Is that fair to say, Cary?

Cary: Totally. Totally is, Rob. And I might even mention here, even, pretty much everybody is familiar with this term staff engagement, that it's something measured. And you Google it, and you'll get 100 articles that pop into your space. But in our book Road to Flourishing, Al Lopus describes engagement as the degree to which an organization—the degree to which a university, college—has created a workplace environment where team members are motivated to bring their fullest contribution, their unique giftedness, and creativity to their role in the organization for the sake of its success. It's just this idea, what's it look like for me to bring the best of who I am?

Robert: Yeah.

Cary: And it's what every leader wants. You know, every leader wants, you know, a person that that's true of is self-motivated, is prone to look to others, to recognize their excellence, you know, all kinds of reasons why engagement. And we know, particularly in universities, it's particularly clear when a member of the university team is engaged, it is felt by their peers, it's felt by the people they lead, it's felt by the students, it's felt by the parents, it's felt by the siblings of the students who come on campus and say, “Someday I want to have this experience.”

Robert: Well, that's what's exciting about the work we do, is that we know culture is we kind of consider the soil. So if you've got healthy soil, you can grow healthy universities and colleges. And all of that leads to higher enrollment, investors, donors, Kingdom impact, all of it. And you can throw a big wet blanket over your mission and the ability to maximize your mission and your capabilities through unhealthy culture.

Cary: Yeah. No doubt.

Robert: You know, that kind of leads me to something I'd like to talk about, which is something new we're doing, which listening to you, Cary, and considering the scores of colleges and universities, it's exciting, actually, that we recently launched an Adjunct Professor Survey. And so you have more of the backstory there than I do, but just on a surface level, what excites me about it is we really don't want to leave any stone unturned when it comes to empowering and supporting, equipping college and university leaders to understand their culture and implement whatever remedies and changes and strategies can help them continue to improve health and engagement. So I would like your—because you kind of were part of what brought this forth and brought us to develop this tool, this Survey. I see it as a supplement to our Employee Engagement Survey, is hearing the voice of adjunct professors, and there's a lot to say about that. So maybe you can give us a little bit of the backstory on, you know, behind this particular new product and the value that it can bring to this sector.

Cary: Yeah. Thanks, Rob. It's a little funny, actually, because we, of course, we've surveyed for 20 years or so. We've had Christian higher ed colleges and universities in that mix all 20 of those years. But it is a—when you think about adjuncts, and you know that there's something special and different about an adjunct professor to a full-time, on-campus professor, we initially, we have some other similar sort of volunteer or associate-staff level things in ministries. We've kind of played with that kind of terminology and some tools. We had a church-volunteer survey because, you know, the church, large church with 100 staff, I mean, that's a massive church, but it's a large church. They might have 2,000 volunteers.

Robert: Right.

Cary: And you need to know, how are they doing? How are they experience their work with you? And so we initially allowed the university to survey their adjuncts with our standard Survey, and it was actually not very successful, and a lot of questions didn't apply: all kinds of questions about pay and benefits and questions about supervision felt different. And so we knew we didn't have the answer there. And we had recently a university surveying partner who said, “Let's solve this together.” And so we worked with a member of our team, who’s been a very active adjunct for many years, and then the university partner. And we developed first draft, second draft, third draft to refine the right 22 questions and the right and different demographic questions for an adjunct population as opposed to a full-time faculty population. And we really got to the place where we feel like we kind of, with the help of the university and adjuncts, we feel like we kind of nailed giving this really tight, clear connection. And so we have been through several rounds within a larger organization, and we haven't yet built a comprehensive longitudinal database of several years, but we've taken our first pass at this. And we're excited about adding several more colleges and universities this year and then starting to get multiple years of data. It's really an exciting time, Rob.

Robert: I agree. Talk to me a little bit about what would you say to a leader, college, university leader, considering, “Okay. Why do I need to hear from the adjunct professors in a survey format like this?” Why is that important? We know that it is, but could you help us underscore some of the methodology and the thought behind that?

Cary: Yeah. Well, increasingly, students are coming at universities and colleges to finish degrees, to on-ramp on degrees during high school, to add a second degree or third degree. There’s just all kinds of ways that adjunct professors have played a role in the shaping of higher ed, and interestingly, particularly Christian higher ed. I mean, you look at some of the, you know, Liberty University and Grand Canyon University, two of the largest online educators in the country, and they're not alone. There are other significant Christian colleges and universities who have more students online than they do in-person. And I think both Liberty and Grand Canyon will be over 100,000 each online. And you can't deliver that out of a building somewhere. You're delivering that out of many, many, many homes, where professors are preparing, pitching classes, or responding to a syllabus, and delivering, in many cases, a very high-quality experience for students. And there are, I'd say, tens of thousands of these adjunct faculty around the country.

And Rob, to your point earlier, they represent the brand of these universities. Some students only know adjuncts—

Robert: Right.

Cary: —and their entire degree, they might not ever step foot on campus. I saw really a fun, kind of exciting, picture in Liberty University's campus magazine. In the center of the picture, you know, a two-page picture of their football stadium. And it was graduation for tens of thousands, some of these students, through their online programs, might not have ever been on campus before. But they understand the mission, they have chosen to be involved with Liberty, and the adjunct shaped their experience.

Robert: Yeah. And you mentioned brand from a brand standpoint. Any touchpoint with a customer, as you might call it, or a student, parent, any touchpoint along the way is important. And so, yes, an adjunct professor, a survey is going to speak their language, give data that is meaningful data in their world, which is different, from standard faculty and staff, but empower leaders to understand what's going on, put metrics and data around it, and see how you can make those improvements, because it is crucial to hear from and get feedback from such an important segment of a university and college.

Cary: You know, Rob, what we've seen is in the early stages of this adjunct feedback is that adjunct connection to mission, I mean, they choose where they want to teach. And mission and vision and what the school stands for is an important part of that. You know, they're not as connected to their peers. If you ask them, “Name 20 people teaching in the same department as you,” they might not be able to do it. But we believe over time that the organizations that engage them most effectively will find these steel threads of connection, where they can help them go deeper into the fiber of the organization. They can become, take pride in, become a part of the culture. And you think that shows up in the classroom? If that's true, you bet it does. Right? It's just, you know, “I want to be taught by somebody who feels a part of the institution I'm in, no matter what it is—elementary school, K through 12, or university, college, graduate programs. I don't just want a relationship with my adjunct. I want a relationship with the university through my adjunct.”

Robert: Mm-hmm. I love it. Well, we're kind of getting close to running out of time, but we've been working with this survey for a shorter period of time. We're launching it, it's launched, it's ready to go. And any kind of real, tangible, I don't know, results or nuggets that you could share with us that what we've discovered so far from the data?

Cary: Well, the first thing I would say is what you said earlier, Rob, is if you're a university, it's interesting. There are some Christian universities that I have knocked on the door, either virtually or in reality, and said, “I'd like to talk to you about what we do at Best Christian Workplaces.” And they'll send me to the marketing department because surveying, for them, means getting a badge. How can we have one more reason why people should come here? Our mission partners, ministry partners at BCW, particularly in the higher-ed space, recognize this is not easy, but it is important. And they go on the journey to health as an operational-leadership commitment, not as a marketing activity. “We're not going to get the badge and hang it up and forget this. We're going to look at the eight drivers. We're going to see what are our greatest strengths, what are areas of opportunity, and go after it.”

So the first point would be, if you don't have an operational-engagement partner, we want to be that for you. And we'd love to, as we said recently to a university that was considering us, we gave them several names of universities who have said, “You have somebody call me, I'll talk to them about what you've done with us.” So get that partner. We'd love for it to BCW.

And then as you pointed out earlier, Rob, how could you not believe that your adjuncts are as important, that a fully engaged adjunct is as important as a fully engaged on-campus team member? Because when they open their mouth, before they open their mouth, when they provide documents and curricula and all those things for their students, it starts to show their level of engagement.

And we’re just here to say we have a tool, and we're excited about it, and we know it's going to grow, and we're looking forward to seeing that database grow, where we can give you helpful insight. Of course, the most helpful insight you'll see is you'll Survey year one, and you'll Survey year two. So you'll have your own trend analysis, which is great because you'll be putting effort on things. But our database, as it grows, will help you to know, how do your scores compare with other Christian higher-ed institutions, and how do they particularly compare with adjuncts? And then you'll have this—the flywheel will start to turn, that you can really have an impact. And the people that interact with you through adjuncts will start to see that this is special.

Robert: Yes. Yeah. And I love what you said about the badge. When we talk about the badge, we're talking about being certified as a best Christian workplace, as being much more than a promotional tool, a marketing tool. It's the mission. It's the Kingdom impact. It's what's going to help make a university and a college really prepare their students and provide the value that they seek to provide. And that's what makes our Survey unique, is that it's 100% employee validated. So you truly have to be healthy, based on the feedback from the employees, to be certified, which is, I always describe it as the cherry on top. It's the icing on the cake. It's something to celebrate. But it's the actual product of a healthy, flourishing workplace culture. And what that produces, that makes all the difference, and that's what's worth celebrating.

Well, Cary, thank you. Thank you so much for all of your insights. Thank you for your work in this Adjunct Professor Survey and everything else that you do.

To our listeners, I want to remind you, you can download the State of the Christian Workplace Report on our website, which is workplaces.org. There'll be a pop up for you, you can click it, just download that free report. Anything that you might need in terms of questions, resources, if you want to demo our Employee Engagement Survey or the Adjunct Professor Survey, just go to our website, workplaces.org, and you can easily get that scheduled and get whatever information that you need to make an informed decision or at least explore a little bit further, what is this all about? Who is Best Christian Workplaces, and how can we partner together to help your culture grow and flourish?

And so with that, I would like to say farewell until our next episode. Look for our next episode. In the next four to six weeks, we'll put a new one out. And we look forward to sharing more insights from the state of the Christian workplace. So God bless you, and we will see you all soon.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to this conversation between Robert and Cary. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I thought it was very insightful.

And you can find ways to connect with each of them and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And as we wrap up in this insightful episode, take a moment to reflect on the state of your own institution’s culture. Are you ready to move from simply managing challenges to truly flourishing as an organization? Start by gathering the data that you need to make informed, impactful decisions. Best Christian Workplaces is here to help you take the next step. So visit workplaces.org to learn more and begin your journey towards creating a flourishing, engaged community that aligns with your mission. Your path to flourishing starts today.

Next Monday we'll return to our regular podcast schedule with a fascinating interview with Brad Carr, the founder and president of SonicAire. Brad has seen tremendous improvements in the health of their workplace culture and has linked these improvements to significant top- and bottom-line impact for his company.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.