Survey results revealed how city of West Palm Beach employees feel about their work environment varies greatly between departments.
“I think those departments that are in this building, because it’s much better communication in this building, tend to score higher,” Mayor Jeri Muoio said.
The city paid $40,000 to Great Place to Work for the company to survey in March the city’s 1,600 employees.
“One of my sayings is that even on our best day, we can be better,” Mayor Muoio said.
Nine-hundred and ninety-four employees responded to the survey, which included more than 50 statements employees could say they felt were true or untrue for their own jobs.
WPTV NewsChannel 5 got the raw data for the survey from the city.
The following graphs summarize the survey results.
The graph below shows the five statements the greatest percentage of employees agreed with in dark blue and the five statements the least employees said were true in light blue.
Overall, employees feel they can take time off when they need it, receive professional development training, have a positive effect on the community and also work in an unbiased environment.
“They get to serve people and they’re very proud of that,” the mayor said.
However, they also feel they aren’t included in decisions that affect their day-to-day jobs.
“That makes a lot of sense to me so we’re trying to figure out how to make sure that that happens,” Mayor Muoio said.
“We had difficulty getting all the police cars that the police needed and they needed their cars and they weren’t getting them in a timely fashion and they were upset about that and I don’t blame them for being upset about it,” Muoio said. “They should’ve gotten their cars.”
The below graph shows the departments’ overall scores ranked from the highest, the library, to the lowest, the police department.
The above chart shows the scores for the five dimensions the survey statements were based on, including camaraderie, credibility, fairness, pride and respect.
The police department scored the lowest for all of those dimensions and overall. The library, parking and the mayor’s office scored the highest among those categories.
The mayor has been meeting with small groups of city employees to go over the results and get even more feedback. She said the city will put together an action plan.