James Silkworth Chief Human Resources Officer

January 2010

Associate Engagement Survey Results are in!  Lourdes conducted an Associate Engagement Survey last Fall.  This survey is done across the Ascension Health system nationwide and is intended to measure “engagement” of our Associates, to the overall Mission of Lourdes. This includes many aspects of employment, for example, are associates aligned to our overall mission of caring?; how do we as Associates feel about such things as our job, our supervisor, and our work environment?; is there confidence in our Senior Leadership?; and do we feel a sense of Spiritual well-being at work?

First, I would like to thank each Associate who participated in the survey. This year, we improved our participation rate to 80.95%...this is higher than the Ascension Health overall average of 77.46%.

Second, I am happy to report that overall, our results are better than last year and compare favorably to other ministries.  Out of 25 core survey items compared to the 2008 results, Lourdes improved on 19 items and scored the same on 6. None went down! Compared to Ascension as a whole, we scored better on 18 items, the same on 5, and lower on only 2.

One particularly impressive result is that Lourdes was the fifth-highest rated ministry overall on the “Model Community Index,” a key Ascension metric that measures such things as overall job satisfaction, retention likelihood, and our willingness to recommend Lourdes as a place to work.

While we are happy with our results, there are, of course, areas for improvement. Associates will participate in the process of creating and executing action plans in their departments so that we can work together to improve Associate Engagement at Lourdes. Associates are encouraged to be open and candid in these meetings so that we can really focus our efforts on those things that will have the most impact.