Total Organizational Health

Every member of our UTC staff, faculty, and administration helps to make sure this university can achieve its mission of shaping the future by educating students and serving as a resource to our broader community and region. Our great university works when each of us plays our part and when we all work together to make great things happen. For the last two years, our university (here at UTC and throughout our system) has been studying the engagement levels and experiences of our staff employees and in 2022 we started gathering similar data from our faculty. Earlier this academic year, we engaged Dr. Chris Cunningham, the director of UTC’s highly regarded industrial and organizational psychology graduate program and an expert in occupational health psychology, to help us make sense of these data and figure out a path forward. After months of work within the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) on this campus, we have determined that we have a unique opportunity right now not just to work on improving engagement among our many employees, but rather to improve the Total Organizational Health of this institution. This broader focus gives us the opportunity to address essential health, safety, and well-being factors that affect the employment experience for all employees of our institution.

Earlier this year, a staff-focused task force began its efforts to develop action plans to address the Total Organizational Health challenges and opportunities linked to this segment of our workforce. We are now in a position to do likewise with our faculty population. Beginning in May and extending through the summer, Dr. Cunningham will be working with an initial steering committee to finish analyzing the available faculty engagement data that we have and to prepare to begin working in August with a second task force focused on Total Organizational Health at the faculty level.

I am not asking for anything from you at this time, but I did want to make sure you knew that this important work was happening and that you will have opportunities to be involved in improving our university’s Total Organizational Health when our next academic year begins in August. I also wanted to make sure you knew that it is a sincere institutional priority to continuously identify and address opportunities to improve and sustain a culture of Total Organizational Health of our campus.

Steve