DALLAS COLLEGE + QUALTRICS

Dallas College needed to drill deeper into the specific sources of employees’ unease. It used Qualtrics to stand up a series of employee-listening touchpoints, beginning with an industry-standard employee survey and then adding topic-specific Pulse surveys and finally developing a customized tool to gather org-wide employee experience (EX) feedback.
The resulting insights led to a series of actions designed to rebuild employee confidence and also improve leadership performance across the Dallas College system. For example, employee skepticism about the competence of their leaders led to several new initiatives, including an increase in the number of training and development days required of managers, the addition of 360° reviews, and the introduction of merit-based compensation.

When Dallas College asked employees about practices that supported their own wellbeing, volunteerism was among the common themes in the responses. Employees even said they were using vacation time in order to volunteer. EX leaders saw an opportunity both to enhance Dallas College’s employee experience and also serve its community. They quickly crafted and gained board approval for a new program enabling employees to volunteer eight hours per year without burning through vacation time. Within a year of the initial EX insight, the new benefit was live within Dallas College’s Human Resources Information System.

Dallas College has an extraordinary 94% employee retention rate, but the College’s leaders dug into EX feedback from the remaining 6% to see what factors spurred their departure. The leading driver wasn’t an unhappy work environment but the lack of a career path within the organization. In response, the College is now outlining specific career paths for roles where there’s not a clear trajectory, and will present those to employees based on the goals outlined in their Individual Development Plans.