Engaged faculty members are a critical asset to higher education institutions. These environments constantly face new changes, and each year brings unique challenges for faculty to embrace. However, the start of the new school year should be an exciting time for everyone on campus, from your returning students to your new hires. Increasing engagement is crucial for your institution, not only for retaining a knowledgeable and skilled staff, but for supporting student success and aligning faculty members with your institutional goals.
The importance of faculty engagement
Faculty engagement refers to the enthusiasm, commitment, and level of investment your faculty exhibits toward your institution and their work. While fulfilling duties is an aspect of this topic, engaging faculty spans beyond work completion. Engaged faculty contribute toward institutional success and hold a strong connection to the student experience.
Benefits of faculty engagement include:
- Improved learning outcomes: Faculty members with a strong passion for teaching, learning, and contributing to institutional success are more likely to create exceptional learning environments. These environments can foster curiosity and foster critical thinking, supporting learning outcomes.
- Increased student satisfaction: Engaged faculty contribute positively to the student experience. Students feel higher levels of value and support from engaged staff. These staff members encourage students and exhibit a passion for student success.
- Enhanced student engagement: An engaged team drives student success and engagement. These team members encourage development and seek immersive opportunities to ensure students get the most from their education. Students experiencing unique program opportunities, enticing class discussions, and robust course content may feel more engaged and connected with their studies.
- Higher faculty retention: When you engage faculty, you lower the likelihood that staff members leave your institution for other opportunities. Engaged faculty are a vital asset in higher education, and the longer your staff remains, the stronger your connections can become.
- Improved reputation: Your institution may seem more attractive to potential students and new teachers or other recruits if you possess an engaged staff. Existing engaged staff are more likely to speak highly of their work environment and recommend others in their field to apply for a position. These word-of-mouth recommendations can empower you to craft an experienced and knowledgeable team of leaders in their area of study. Students can also appreciate your powerhouse staff and have a clear picture of how your institution aligns with their version of success.
- Increased productivity: Faculty productivity can refer to on-campus and extracurricular tasks and activities. Increasing productivity on campus can boost student outcomes by minimizing errors and streamlining processes. However, increased productivity could also mean your team is contributing to their field through research, peer reviews, book publishing, and other accomplishments. Your staff can highlight these achievements on their web profiles, making your institution more desirable for first-time or transfer students.
- Stronger sense of community: Typically, the more engaged your team is, the stronger sense of community you’ll have. Increased engagement often goes hand in hand with increased collaboration, aiding in creating a friendly and positive environment that aligns each faculty member with your institution’s goals and visions.
Factors impacting the engagement of faculty members
Increasing faculty engagement involves understanding the factors that hinder engagement so you can identify institutional strengths and weaknesses. Your institution may excel in several areas but lack another crucial feature. Factors impacting engagement include:
- Compensation: Compensation is one of the most notable factors impacting faculty engagement and retention. Employees with higher pay rates are more likely to remain at their place of work. When compensation is high enough to sustain faculty lifestyles, they’re more likely to be satisfied with their work. Alternatively, low pay contributes to poor mental health, which can negatively impact faculty on campus and at home. Providing reliable and fair compensation is an excellent way to minimize finance-related stress and encourage a healthy work-life balance.
- Development: Empowering development through learning and training opportunities can show your care for your team. Along with encouraging staff to contribute to their area of study, these developmental opportunities can help faculty find new methods for completing tasks, teaching, creating course content, and otherwise supporting student success.
- Task variety: Repetitive or mundane tasks can increase the risk of staff burnout. Your staff will likely be less engaged if they consistently perform the same tasks over and over. Additionally, a lack of freedom when completing tasks or an inability to influence decisions can lower engagement.
- Communication levels: Information flow directly affects faculty engagement and organizational commitment. Communication among faculty members and decision-makers can better align staff with your institutional goals and create a more positive and collaborative culture. Communication can strengthen co-worker relationships and make time on campus more enjoyable.
- Campus cultures: Everyone on campus contributes to your campus culture. Campus culture refers to the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of a group of people. While everyone possesses varying points of view and beliefs, the overall environment should be supportive, welcoming, and safe. Ensuring a supportive and inclusive environment can benefit each faculty member and provide an easier transition for new teachers, especially those early in their careers.
Strategies to engage faculty in a new school year
There are many ways you can engage faculty at your institution. A combination of strategies will likely be the most effective, but you should collaborate with your team and ask for feedback on new ideas. Talk with your team to identify your best opportunity areas and check in after implementation to see if these methods bring the desired results. For inspiration, consider the following strategies:
1. Express project value
When you assign specific projects to team members or departments, it’s crucial to express the project’s value and how each faculty member can contribute to institutional success through task completion. Emphasize the importance, goals, and projected or desired outcomes for every project to align your staff’s understanding with your vision. This strategy can also create more meaningful experiences by ensuring team members have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. They can be more intentional with their actions and find more value in their tasks because they understand how their contribution will impact your institution.
You can also find ways to increase engagement for each project you assign. For example, encouraging staff with similar fields of study or project interests to work together can enhance collaboration. Enhanced collaboration can drive project outcomes and empower your team to find alternative and more meaningful ways to complete tasks.
2. Use student and faculty data
To showcase project value and elicit team understanding, you can use student data to drive decision-making. Sharing this data with your faculty can highlight the need for change and emphasize where your strategies are working. This information can define your objectives and provide a clear focus for your team. Student data also marks a defined starting point before implementing a change and allows your team to reflect on the progress your institution makes over time.
Information drives insights, and collecting meaningful data points empowers you to identify trends and pain points in your existing structure. As you make changes and shift focus, be sure to explain why and use recent data to support your decisions. Share all findings with your team to highlight positive or negative changes, and allow faculty to see how their contributions impact outcomes and how you’re using their efforts to drive decision-making. Encourage your team to collect data in various ways, such as course evaluations and surveys alongside exams and assignment scores.
3. Provide feedback opportunities
Feedback is vital for navigating challenges and creating unique solutions. Asking for feedback can engage faculty by showing each team member that you value their opinion. This process can highlight the meaning of their tasks and allow them to see how they contribute to institutional goals and success. Additionally, when making changes that impact specific teams or departments, asking for feedback is one of the best ways to ensure effectiveness and evaluate attitudes. Many of your decisions will directly impact faculty workflow and processes, so it’s crucial to speak with the people navigating these changes to ensure your strategies are making tasks easier, reducing workloads, or simplifying other aspects to drive productivity.
Furthermore, your faculty will often have a firsthand account and informed opinions regarding student-related changes. Instructors and other staff interact with your students regularly, empowering them to gather reliable information about the effectiveness of a change. These faculty members can open discussions with students to see how they perceive your efforts and where they would like to see improvements. Reliable student feedback should guide decision-making, and you should implement many opportunities for students and faculty to offer input.
4. Leverage the right technology
Technology can have a significant impact on engagement. The right tools can eliminate repetitive tasks, lessen workloads, and enhance productivity to create a more satisfying work experience. Educational technology can engage students and faculty by increasing collaboration, creating personalized experiences, and opening opportunities for more immersive course content.
Instructors can utilize technology to improve instruction methods and implement digital tools to make content more engaging and accessible to students. Technology also empowers faculty and students to access educational resources whenever necessary. These tools allow faculty to create robust schedules that align with their peak efficiency levels, whether at home or on campus. Your team can also utilize these resources to aid in mapping curriculum, identify at-risk students, and otherwise amplify educational impact.
5. Enhance institutional collaboration
Faculty member collaboration supports a positive and respectful environment that facilitates trust and boosts engagement. Increasing collaboration can help align your team with institutional goals and encourage you and your staff to interact with new ideas and possible solutions. When educators work together, they can create more robust learning experiences. Faculty can discuss teaching methods, curriculum mapping strategies, and new trends that can shape the classroom experience and make tasks easier and more enjoyable.
Increased collaboration can be especially beneficial for new teachers navigating the higher education landscape for the first time. Junior-senior interactions have proved to be important for job satisfaction, and these connections can serve as networking opportunities that lead to career development.
6. Improve career development and training opportunities
Many higher education faculty members seek professional development opportunities while working on campus. Instructors may want to make strides in their area of study, while others may have professional goals that require specific experiences or skill sets. Expanding your training and development opportunities is an excellent way to meet these needs while enhancing engagement. A recent study highlighted that nearly 70% of workers seek employer-provided development when searching for a new job, and just under half would switch jobs if the new position offered training opportunities.
Furthermore, investing in developmental opportunities empowers you to build a faculty of experienced and skilled team members. Whether you offer a mentoring program, deliver workshops, host conferences, or have another way of encouraging development, this simple strategy can make a lasting impact on you and your staff.
7. Celebrate achievements and consider rewards
Recognition can be a significant motivator. According to a recent survey, only roughly half of full-time employees in the United States feel appreciated at work. Furthermore, more than 60% of respondents report being confused about not receiving bigger projects despite meeting their existing goals. Furthermore, only 7% of those who failed to obtain a promotion received an explicit reason for the outcome.
These numbers highlight that decision-makers and leaders can amplify recognition efforts to enhance understanding and make staff feel the appreciation they deserve. Small and large actions can boost team morale. Actions like showcasing achievements within your academic community or offering incentives for reaching certain goals can help your team see that you recognize, appreciate, and encourage their efforts.
8. Cultivate a culture of shared decision-making
Crafting a sense of ownership can be vital for engagement. Empowering your team to take charge in the decision-making process can help them develop a strong sense of community and better align them with your goals. Diversity drives good decision-making by bringing different points of view, cultural backgrounds, and unique experiences to the discussion. This strategy also delivers several other benefits, including increasing collaboration, showing your value of team opinions, and ensuring your team is satisfied with outcomes that will directly impact them or their work.
You can engage your team with several types of decision-making — strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic decisions have a long-term impact on your institution, and you should always be transparent about these goals and visions. Tactical decisions refer to the immediate or near-future actions your team can take to achieve your long-term goals. Operational decisions often refer to daily or high-volume tasks. Including your team in operational decisions can empower you to find solutions for streamlining tasks, repeating mundane activities, and otherwise lessening workloads for more complex and engaging opportunities.
You can cultivate a culture of shared decision-making by:
- Creating task forces or committees: Committees and task forces offer a great opportunity for embracing shared decision-making. Provide these groups with a clear focus and offer the proper resources for effective work completion. Follow through on the recommendations your teams make and work together to implement new solutions.
- Delegating responsibilities and tasks: Assigning specific tasks to individuals can create a heightened sense of ownership. Ownership fosters accountability, which can lead to a more engaged workforce.
Engage faculty with Watermark
Engaging your faculty is not optional — it’s vital to your institution’s success. With Watermark, you can find the technological tools you need to connect with your team and support them in many ways. Watermark Faculty Success is a higher education solution that supports faculty development and provides a central hub for faculty activity data.
Faculty Success allows administrators and decision-makers to facilitate reviews and development, recognize faculty accomplishments, confirm credentials, and capture a holistic picture of faculty activity. This software solution supports institutional growth by enabling you to create custom reports, enhance communication, assign tasks, and more.
Start engaging your faculty with Watermark by requesting a demo of Faculty Success.
