The Internal Communications Working Group, led by Christine Sanni (LA '89), executive director of Advancement Communications and Services, and Michael Baenen, chief of staff in the Office of the President, conducted a survey among Tufts faculty and staff across all schools last spring to gauge how effective Tufts is at relaying relevant information to its employees in a timely fashion.
“Basically we did a gap analysis," Sanni said. "We wanted to figure out what kind of information [the employees] are seeking from the university, how they currently get information and if those sources are useful.”
The survey, which was offered to all employees at Tufts, was completed by 21 percent of faculty and staff, according to Sanni. The sample size included a wide variety of time of service at Tufts, from new employees to those who have been at Tufts for many years.
“The main thing we found is that most faculty and staff are looking for more information as employees of the university," Sanni said. "They feel like they get good information about things like research that faculty is doing and what’s going on with student life. However, they don’t feel like they get enough good information about what it means to be an employee here at the university.”
A significant number of faculty and staff indicated that they want to receive more information via email, Sanni added.
“There was confusion over the emails that the university sends," she explained. "Employees felt that there was duplication in some instances and lack of information in others. So [the working group] recommended mass emails, cleaning up the ones we send to faculty and staff and just [creating] a more streamlined way of communicating.”
Another finding of the survey is that the Tufts Now website, which posts news, events, social media and more, is widely used by university employees, Sanni said.
“We know that Tufts Now has been used the most, and contains a lot of good information about what faculty and students are doing," she said. "So our recommendation to them was to include more information about staff, such as information about parking stickers, the Wellness Center and benefits changes. Information that is usually sent in emails, we want to relay through Tufts Now, because it’s sent on a weekly basis and widely accessed.”
Sanni said that this survey is not just helpful in the improvement of person-to-person communication, but also in the planned redesign of the Tufts.edu webpage, which will be kicking off this week, according to Director of Digital Communications Jean Ayers.
Ayers told the Daily in an email that the redesign “depends on results of the discovery phase of the project, which will include audience research and stakeholder input.”
Sanni added that with almost 5,000 faculty and staff members, communication is not as easy as it may seem.
“Tufts has a pretty complicated communications structure," she said. "There is a central communications office, but then every school has [its] own communications person."
Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler agreed with the goals of the working group.
“Effective communication across all of Tufts’ campuses and schools is vital, and the work of the [working group] is of real importance to Tufts," Thurler told the Daily in an email.
Sanni said she hopes that bridging the different communication entities will spur healthier relationships between staff on campus that will lead to more engaged employees, higher work satisfaction and more knowledge about the community as a whole.
The working group, which was launched two years ago, deals with a variety of both internal and external communications issues, according to Sanni. Communication committees are nothing new to Tufts, and there have been several iterations of this committee in years past, she said.
“The committee struggled in the beginning as to how we could unearth what the issues were involving internal communications," Sanni said. "So rather than just throwing darts at a wall, we decided to conduct a survey.”
Sanni said that they saw just how important internal communications are at Tufts.
“We decided that internal communications is a huge issue at the university,” she said.
