Professor John Wagner didn’t read UBC’s third workplace experience survey. He knew what it would say and doubted it would change anything.
UBC has conducted four Workplace Experience Surveys (WES) since 2009 through third-party consultant TalentMap, the most recent of which was made public in February 2018. All three have shown the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences (IKBSAS) at UBC Okanagan (UBCO) — which accounts for about half of all students enrolled at UBCO — has consistently reported the lowest faculty workplace satisfaction.
On the first survey, 28 per cent of IKBSAS faculty responded favourably to the question “I feel involved in decisions that affect me in my day-to-day work,” compared to 42 per cent of UBC Vancouver faculty.
On a question of whether they would recommend UBC as a good workplace, 36 per cent of IKBSAS faculty responded favourably compared to 61 per cent for Vancouver faculty.
“It was pretty clear to me by the time they did a second survey that nothing meaningful would happen,” said Wagner, an associate professor of anthropology at IKBSAS.
According to the WES, any category where less than 60 per cent of responses are favourable warrants “further investigation.” More than two thirds of IKBSAS faculty responses in 2017 across 91 questions were below that threshold.
Results from the IKBSAS in 2017 were especially low on measures of support for faculty, students and research. Only 24 per cent of IKBSAS faculty felt that there were sufficient resources for students, compared to an average of 46 per cent for all of UBC. Only 31 per cent of IKBSAS faculty expressed confidence in senior management, compared to 46 per cent across UBC.
The IKBSAS’s lowest response in 2017 was on whether they believed UBC would take meaningful action in response to the survey. Only nine per cent of respondents responded favourably.
In an emailed statement, Nathan Skolski of UBCO’s media relations said the IKBSAS “works hard to address all concerns raised by the Faculty Council and the Workplace Experience survey” and “takes the advice and recommendations of faculty, students and staff seriously as it works to create a supportive and productive work environment.”
But Wagner said he hasn’t seen that progress.
“To be honest I’m surprised the scores are a positive as they are, faculty are feeling like they have no voice here … there’s no autonomy,” he said. “It robs you of any kind of sense of optimism and constructive engagement when your voice doesn’t matter.”
Profs say UBC ignored faculty council report on poor WES results
When the first WES was published, Wagner was optimistic that things could improve. He said the IKBSAS WES results struck him as so “dramatic” that they “cried out for more analysis.”
Wagner went to the IKBSAS faculty council — the body that “makes rules for the government, direction and management” of faculty affairs, subject to approval from UBC Senate. They decided to establish an ad-hoc committee to analyze the data.
The IKBSAS elected eight professors to the committee from each of the IKBSAS’s academic units. Wagner was appointed committee chair. Their results — published March 2014 in an internal report obtained by The Ubyssey — were worrying.
UBC’s official conclusions about the 2011 WES had been that Okanagan professor responses were “generally positive, reflecting an overall engaged workforce.”
But the faculty council report concluded that the IKBSAS faculty responses were “generally negative, reflecting an overall disengaged workforce.”
The report contained 12 recommendations. One key recommendation, which was immediately ratified by vote, called on UBC to begin an external review. Faculty reviews usually happen every five to six years, but by 2014 the IKBSAS had gone nine years without one. A review recently began in August 2018.
The report also recommended that the IKBSAS establish faculty committees for input on strategic direction and the budget; that administrators keep and publish minutes from leadership meetings and that the IKBSAS develop a workload flexibility policy, since some professors were reporting “overly heavy workload assignments.”
UBCO said that three of the recommendations that related to wording of WES questions “were taken into account and the survey has evolved since 2014."
“[The WES] clearly identify that problems exist,” said Professor Michael Pidwirny, who has served as an Okanagan member of the UBC Faculty Association’s (UBCFA) member grievance committee. “But UBC has made little attempt to fix these items over the last 12 years."
Pidwirny ran for UBCFA president in March on a platform that Okanagan faculty were “tired of being treated poorly by the university and their faculty association.”
Wagner said that campaign was a rare public statement, but he has little hope for change. He pointed to a faculty forum scheduled by the IKBSAS in July to discuss the WES results that was canceled last minute by the dean’s office due to “lack of interest.”
“[This] report was commissioned at my insistence, without my dean’s support, and it took a great deal of time away from my career,” Wagner said. “And look where it got us — nowhere.”