Engaging Success

In a February VC Notes, I encouraged you to let your voice be heard and fill out this year’s employee engagement survey. And, wow, did you step up to the challenge in record numbers. Not only did we exceed our goal for overall participation – we set a stretch goal of 80% and hit 81%! We also improved the engagement score from the 2022 survey by nearly 7% – 2022: 3.85 overall survey score, 2025: 4.03!  

Your feedback through this survey will allow us to know and understand opportunities where we can improve our organization and/or your work environment and satisfaction. I can’t stress enough how important the results are, and I was excited about how many of you participated. 

I’m not going to go into too much detail because there will be an article on the survey results in Monday’s Medical Center Matters newsletter, but I wanted to point out a few key things. 

In the overall engagement score, it’s also worth noting that you tallied a 5.5 to 1 ratio of highly engaged to disengaged – much higher than the national average of 4 to1. This is significant because a highly engaged workforce tends to support a positive work culture, has less turnover and is more tightly aligned with the organization’s mission and strategic priorities. We’ve seen all of this in real time this year through our many successes, which would not have been possible without your work and dedication.

Our overall engagement score of 4.03 puts us in the 56th percentile of all health care institutions, but when you break out academic medicine, we are in the 74th percentile. One point out of being in the top quarter of all academic medicine is significant because of how unique we are even among teaching health care institutions. Most academic medical centers don’t face the same challenges we do, aren’t the state’s only AMC and safety net hospital and don’t care for a population that ranks low in nearly all health status categories. You have a bigger, harder job than most, and you step up to every challenge head on and complete the task for your fellow Mississippians. Survey responses show that your engagement level is rising as compared to other organizations. Looking back at previous survey cycles, we were in the 39th percentile for all health care institutions and 43rd percentile for academic medical centers in 2020. In 2022 we were 22nd and 28th, respectively.  

The jump from 2022’s scores to this year’s highlights how much we can do when we have information from the survey and you make yourself heard. We were able to initiate several measures that were, in one way or another, intended to improve the work environment and engage our workforce. 

I would say “mission accomplished,” but our work isn’t done – and in an important area like workforce engagement, we’ll never stop pushing for improvement. I’m pleased that you’ve responded that you feel engaged and that through your comments we can identify ways to make your work life even better. I’ve said many times and am happy to repeat that YOU are our greatest asset. Thank you for taking the time to let us hear from you and helping us better understand ways that we can support your role in our work on building A Healthier Mississippi.