GW staffers reported “overwhelming” burnout, heavy workloads and inadequate job training in a monthslong survey presented by the Staff Council on Friday.
Amanda Kohn, the council’s correspondence and engagement secretary, said at a Friday meeting that the results from the survey, which councilmembers sent to GW staff over the past several months, showed staff members’ discontent with their workload, office politics, a lack of respect among colleagues, insufficient support resources and job training. Kohn said Staff Council leaders will compile the survey’s findings and present the detailed survey results at the staff council’s next meeting on Sept. 15 and present a report to the Board of Trustees at its meeting on Sept. 27.
“We appreciate GW staff taking the time to respond to the survey as carefully and honestly as they have,” Kohn said. “With your support, we know we’re going to be able to create a presentation that shows GW leadership the issues our staff are facing on a regular basis.”
The survey — which the council sent to nonexecutive level employees — asked staff to rank how manageable they find their workload on a scale of one to five. The survey also asked staff how often they feel exhausted or drained after work, experience physical symptoms of work-related stress and have feelings of cynicism related to their jobs on a scale from never to always. The survey prompted respondents to detail which aspects of working at GW contribute most to their stress in a write-in answer.
Kohn said at the February council meeting that she began incorporating surveys into the council’s monthly newsletter to gather feedback on various topics.
Compensation and merit pay have been recurring topics of conversation at the council meetings and in surveys, and staff have said their compensation does not match the cost of living in the District.
“We certainly are looking at improving that going forward,” Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes said at the January council meeting. “We understand the cost of living, inflation are certainly challenges.”
Staff Council President Bridget Schwartz said at Friday’s meeting that officials increased the merit pool by one percent. The merit pool is part of GW’s pay-for-performance system, in which heads of departments and schools award staff members additional compensation based on performance ratings, which include “Exceeds Expectations,” “Achieves Expectations” and “Needs Improvement,” according to the Staff Performance Management and Salary Planning Guide. Staff members have previously reported that high-performing staff receive limited rewards through the merit pay system due to a small merit pool, which some experts said was because the system was flawed due to its subjectivity.
Fernandes and University President Ellen Granberg said last year that officials intended to increase the size of the merit pay pool for staff but that resources were tight.
Student Government Association President Ethan Fitzgerald gave a report to the council and said he would like to collaborate with councilmembers to increase the recognition that staff receives from students. He said he knows staff can feel “overworked and underappreciated,” and to combat this he wants to encourage staff to attend more community events and ask students to vote on staff members to be recognized in the SGA newsletter.
“We have amazing students,” Fitzgerald said. “We have dedicated staff, but oftentimes I see people who feel disconnected. I see a gap between students and staff. This year, I want us to bridge that divide.”
Fitzgerald also spoke about initiatives for the upcoming academic year like granting students and staff voting power on the Board and hosting a mental health resource fair. He said he wants to schedule campus events at times where graduate students would likely be on campus, like in the evenings before night classes, so they can attend and feel connected to other students.
He added that this year, the SGA will restart GW Listens — an inactive mental health hotline for students originally launched in 2017 by student volunteers — and will advocate for professors to implement mental health days in which students are not penalized for missing class.
Mindy Galván, the council parliamentarian, said the council would commence elections for the 2025 staff in October, with voting expected to last about a month. She said staff members can run for vice president, historian, treasurer, parliamentarian, correspondence and engagement secretary as well as for 25 school representative positions. The Staff Council consists of 35 members, who serve one-year terms beginning on Jan. 1.
The Staff Council year was previously set in accordance with the fiscal year, but councilmembers in February voted to amend the bylaws to align future Staff Council cycles with the calendar year.
Candidates must receive a nomination from either themselves or another staff member, and the council will send out the form for nominations next week, Galván said. She added that councilmembers can run for reelection.
Schwartz said Andrea Kovachy, the former representative for Development and Alumni Relations, “recently” resigned from the council, leaving the position vacant. Schwartz asked individuals interested in filling the position for the remaining five months of the term to contact her.
“I’m deeply, deeply grateful for their invaluable contributions and dedications,” Schwartz said in reference to Kovachy.
Glenna Bennett, the director of payroll, discussed changes to Time Reporting, the system employees use to record the number of hours they work. Previously, when an employee clocked in and out, the system would round to the nearest quarter hour when calculating total hours worked. This year, officials removed the rounding rule, which staff complained made it hard to clock in and out at exactly the right time to avoid going into overtime periods.
Bennett said officials made the change because many states have banned the rounding system and they want to get “ahead of the curve” to avoid lawsuits if D.C. does ban it in the future. She said it would be overall beneficial because staff will get paid for the exact amount of time they are working.
“We really do need to pay everybody for exactly what they’re working,” Bennett said.
Under the new system, councilmember Tricia Greenstein said she was concerned about having to clock out at the exact end of her shift to avoid getting notifications that she was working overtime. Bennett said most of the issues regarding overtime notifications should have been solved after an initial adjustment period for staff when the system launched this year.
