When animals’ lives are in your hands, feeling a strong, personal sense of attachment to your job is essential. What can animal shelters do to keep their employees and volunteers engaged?
In the fall of 2012, Maddie’s InstituteSM conducted an online survey of executive directors, employees and volunteers from companion-animal care organizations across the country, seeking to assess overall levels of engagement among shelter employees, investigate what factors can increase engagement or disengagement, and provide resources to enable organizations to improve engagement.
The number one tip for keeping their team members actively connected to their jobs? Evalute the degree to which they already are!
From the report summary:
Only 22% of executive directors of staffed organizations, 35% of full-time staff and 19% of part-time staff indicated that their organization had a formal process to evaluate staff engagement. Additionally, only 7% of volunteers reported having a formal process for evaluating volunteer engagement.
Find out what drives engagement at your organization. Consider devising an annual or semi-annual engagement survey.
If you’re not sure how to get started, you can use an engagement assessment program like the
Shelter Diagnostic System from the Humane Society of the United States, or check out the engagement evaluation criteria used by The Training
Source and UNC’s Kenan Flagler Business School.
Want to know more about our survey results? Check out a summary here, and view or download a PDF of the entire survey report here.
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