What do employees think about working for Virginia Beach City Public Schools?

The results of this year’s Employee Input Survey, presented to the School Board on June 21, revealed that 85 percent of employees agreed they are proud to work in Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS), while an even higher 88 percent agreed the school division holds high expectations for all staff.

The biannual survey, administered in February by the Department of Planning, Innovation and Accountability in partnership with Human Resources, asks employees about their levels of agreement with working conditions and satisfaction with compensation and benefits.

The survey captured the opinions of the 4,055, or 40 percent, of VBCPS employees.

The lowest survey results were in the areas of compensation and benefits. Although only 31 percent of survey respondents expressed satisfaction with salary/compensation and only 38 percent expressed satisfaction with health insurance premiums, these were increases over the previous survey.

Chief Human Resources Officer John Mirra indicated the survey, which is anonymous, is one of many venues for gathering feedback and part of the Employee Input Process.

“The goal is continuous improvement over multi-year periods. We conduct this survey because we place a high value on the opinions of staff,” Mirra said “Over the years, employee feedback through the survey and other venues has resulted in continuous improvement for all division employees.”

Improvements have included:

• Redeployment of resources. For example, all custodians were converted to eight hours to better meet the needs of the schools.   Permanent teacher substitutes were provided two weeks earlier since schools indicated they needed them sooner.
• Revisions of policies and regulations – The cap on accumulated annual leave was increased. Also, employees are now allowed to donate sick leave in addition to annual and/or personal reasons leave.
• Streamlined and improved processes – Staffing timelines were improved via a multi-year interdepartmental effort to ultimately staff schools earlier.
• Gathered additional input/information as necessary from stakeholders – Stakeholders were invited to give their opinions on a variety of issues. For example, teachers were involved with the revision of their evaluation process. Also, focus groups were organized regarding concerns over the elementary teacher workday expectations and overall workloads.

Employee input was the starting point for a multitude of other accomplishments over the years.

This included the creation of an online Employee Self Service feature for staff to view leave balances, paycheck history, tax exemptions, etc.  Additionally, compensation for employees on the same pay grade with the same years of experience was studied and eligible employees’ salaries are being adjusted based on available funding each year.

During the School Board workshop, Mirra encouraged listeners to share the importance of employees’ participation and the impact their feedback can have on improving the workplace.

Senior staff will now further analyze the survey results to consider possible areas requiring attention and convene focus groups, as necessary, to further understand concerns.

 

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