Leaders throughout City of Hope will soon receive results of a recent City of Hope employee survey, allowing them to act on staff input from their areas and respond to concerns.

Nearly two-thirds of City of Hope staff and physicians — more than 2,300 people — responded to the 2008 City of Hope organizational survey, which ran from mid-May to June. The survey aimed to measure how well people understand and support City of Hope’s strategy, whether the institution’s systems adequately support that strategy, and identify ways to improve the organization, among other goals.

“Employees’ responses were especially useful in helping us get a complete and accurate view of our organization, in identifying areas of strength and areas where we need to focus attention and in establishing a baseline that we’ll use to measure our progress,” said Michael A. Friedman, M.D., president and chief executive officer. “The Executive Team and I are committed to acting on these survey results.”

The survey was created in five different versions to address the needs of specific groups: physicians, Beckman Research Institute, development and external affairs, business support services and the medical center.

Vice presidents will soon receive more detailed survey results, and directors will receive specific results from their areas so they may provide feedback. The organization also will provide directors with training on how to develop action
plans in response to the results.

Friedman recently released general, overarching survey results that pointed both to organizational strengths and concerns. Among the strengths:

• Commitment to and confidence in City of Hope: Staff members are committed to helping City of Hope succeed and have confidence that the institution will be successful; they also understand how their jobs help the institution achieve its goals.
• Employee engagement: Employees are advocates for City of Hope, exert extra effort, feel a sense of organizational pride, enjoy their work and are always thinking of ways to improve.
• Values: People support and believe in City of Hope’s values.

Among the concerns and opportunities:

• Recognizing, rewarding and developing people: Some employees indicated that City of Hope needs to improve how it recognizes and rewards good performance and how it assures the fairness of job promotions. They also feel the institution should improve how employees get regular performance feedback with appropriate metrics, and it should create better opportunities for career development.
• Leadership engagement: The visibility of leaders and the degree of open, honest communication between staff and management can be improved.
• Processes: Processes for coordinating work, reviewing contracts, allocating resources and making timely decisions can be more effective.
• Patient safety: The institution should continue to improve and build its culture of patient safety.

The survey also revealed some positive trends since City of Hope’s last organization survey in 2005. These trends emerged among results that could be compared from survey to survey:

• People enjoy their work (90 percent in 2008, compared to 78 percent in 2005).
• Employees perceive that supervisors care about employee development (78 percent in 2008, 67 percent in 2005).
• Supervisors provide regular, constructive feedback (64 percent in 2008, 57 percent in 2005). 
• Supervisors provide coaching on how to improve performance (69 percent in 2008, 59 percent in 2005).

Organizational Development is now meeting with leadership groups across the campus to share the top-line results and discuss priorities in addressing the results.

“The key is for us to have clear priorities in our action plans,” said Virginia Opipare, chief operating officer. “We want to make sure we can take a priority and make real progress on it before we move on to the next. We don’t want to take on too many things to fix at one time and be less than successful.”

The Executive Team proposes starting with action plans in two areas: recognitions and rewards and culture of patient safety. Recognition and rewards was an area of improvement most cited by employees, and patient safety — while also lower than benchmark — was considered critical by Executive Team members and groups they met with.

Employees may read updates on the survey on the City of Hope intranet at www.coh.org/survey.

“I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to fill out this survey,” Friedman said. “I want to encourage everyone to engage in making suggestions that improve what we do and how we do it. We are all privileged to work at this extraordinary place, and we all share a commitment to making it even better.”