Dear Team DPS,
Last month, we asked all members of Team DPS to share their voice and provide feedback about DPS as a whole, as well as individual leaders, through our annual CollaboRATE engagement survey. An impressive
71% (more than 8,600) of you shared valuable feedback
. Thank you to everyone for your time in sharing your thoughts and suggestions, and we are excited to share
those results today
.
To start, I’m so impressed and energized by the level of engagement and commitment to the mission that Team DPS brings to our families and students. In the survey,
94% of you said your job has a positive impact
on your school or department, and
91% of team members said they enjoy their work
in their school or department. Thank you for that commitment and for all of the work you do to back it up.
The overall CollaboRATE results show really strong engagement across Team DPS. In fact, we saw a
4-percentage-point jump in overall engagement
-- which measures how much people enjoy their work and believe they’re making a difference. As we look back on a time of transition in 2018-19, it’s exciting to see so many team members feeling positive about their experience in DPS. High engagement is critical to being as strong of a team as we can be in order to reach our goals.
Other celebrations from our CollaboRATE survey include:
- 90% of you find your job to be challenging and interesting.
- 87% said you believe the people you work with are willing to help each other, even if it means doing something outside of your usual activities.
- Team members shared that working with students and colleagues are the top reasons we continue to work in DPS.
Your feedback also highlighted the areas we still need to improve, particularly around creating a clear district plan and prioritizing the appreciation and care we show for our employees.
In this year’s CollaboRATE results, 54% of you said that leadership is communicating a vision of the future that is motivating to you. As we move from a year of transition into a time of teaming together to work on the
next Denver Plan
, we have a tremendous opportunity to hear from you and our community, and then create a vision for our schools and build a plan focused on equity that lifts all of our students and is a rallying call for Team DPS. Learn more about engagement opportunities
here
, as we all work to define our path forward together.
The survey results also show that we need to do a better job of valuing each individual and your well-being. The results showed 53% of you said DPS cares about the well-being of its team members, and 64% feel valued as an employee of DPS. We need to do better. The BEST thing about DPS is our people -- the connection you feel to our mission and the commitment you put into helping our students and families. And we’ll devote more attention to supporting not just the important work, but to supporting you -- the dedicated people doing it. To that end, we will engage in conversations and ask the right questions to better understand exactly what well-being means to you. And we will seek out new ways to build trust and appreciation so we can better show you how much we value every member of Team DPS.
Thank you again for sharing your feedback. Hearing both what’s working and what we need to improve is essential to be a high-performing, learning team. We hope it will also help our leaders better understand how they can support their teams. Our leaders take your feedback very seriously (it's also a part of every leader's performance evaluation), and we expect every leader to share engagement results and their leader results, the feedback they received and their action steps with their teams. I encourage you to engage in these conversations to continue building a stronger team, and a stronger DPS, together.
Warm regards,
Susana
