We know that in order to provide great service to the public, King County needs to be a great place to work. The King County Employee Survey is an important tool to help us get there. The employee survey provides an opportunity to check-in with all employees to learn what is going well and where we need to improve. That is why your participation is critical – we need each employee to provide their point of view so that we can really understand what employees want and need to be fully engaged in their work.

In addition to conducting the all-employee survey annually, we will conduct periodic pulse surveys or randomly selected employee throughout the year. This will allow us to measure our progress in making change within the organization. 

All employees are eligible for the employee survey, except the following:

• Employees in Superior Court, District Court, Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office
• Employees who are interns or short term temporary (STT)
• Employees who have not worked at the county for at least 3 months prior to the survey period (for 2022, employees must have started before December 7, 2021 to be eligible)

No. Participation is voluntary; however, please make sure you take the opportunity to speak up. We need to get as many responses as possible to produce more reliable and robust data, while also ensuring that the views we act upon are representative of all our employees.

The first countywide employee survey was conducted in 2009 to inform the development of the King County Strategic Plan, and a follow-up survey was conducted in 2012. In 2015, we started conducting annual employee engagement surveys that report down to the workgroup level. The results for the past surveys can be found here.

The survey is coordinated by the Executive’s Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget, in partnership with Human Resources. An external consultant, Confirmit, is managing the survey administration and will anonymize the data and send it back to King County for analysis at the end of the survey period.

Confirmit is a software company with over 22 years of experience in delivering employee, customer and market research survey projects all around the world. With over 30 Million Employee surveys completed every year, Confirmit’s passion is to empower people to improve their world by making voices matter.

To learn more about Confirmit for employee surveys, visit www.confirmit.com/What-We-Do/Voice-of-the-Employee.

All representatives are listed in the table below.

Brian Roberts, KCIT	Leslie Brown, DPD
Shawn Abernethy, DES	Janet Parks, OLR
Chris Ynzunza, DNRP	Brooke Bascom, DHR
Dawn Holmes, DAJD	Dan Farmer, PSB/Exec
Tina Abbott, DPH	Jonathan Larson, Assessor
Ann McBroom, ADR	Kendall LeVan Hodson, Elections
Jonathan Halperin, Metro Transit	Heidi Parkington-Thal, PAO
Cheryl Binetti, DLS	Janine Weihe, Legislative Branch
Liz Causby-Miles, DCHS	Teresa Bailey, DJA

As a guide, the survey will take 10-20 minutes, with most people completing the survey in less than 15 minutes. The time taken depends on how long you think about your responses.

The survey will ask questions about your work unit. Every work organization is different. However, when answering questions about your “work unit,” please consider your co-workers with whom you interact with the most on a regular basis. Work groups can be called “units,” “sections,” “groups,” or even an “office” depending on the size of your overall organization.

Supervisor/manager questions should be based on the person who provides you the most direct supervision. A supervisor may be a Chief, Sergeant, Lead, etc. Contact your survey representative for more clarification on who your supervisor/manager is.

The leadership questions have been reworded to be more clear and straightforward. Additionally, they now have the names of people or refer to teams of people the question refers to.

There have been several exciting changes to the survey questions:

• New questions to measure belonging and inclusion have been added
• New questions to capture work location and preference for remote
• Everyone will take the survey electronically
• Data will be available four weeks sooner, creating more time for action planning
• Demographic questions are optional, will be more specific, and the option for “prefer not to disclose” has been removed. Instead, people who do not want to answer a question can skip it.

All questions on the survey, including those asking about demographic information are optional. If you do not respond to a question you may still submit a survey. However, we would really appreciate you answering as many of these questions as you feel comfortable. In order for us to address issues of equity based on employee demographics, we need to know this information and the more employees providing this information, the better our data quality.

King County is committed to increasing equity, fairness, opportunity and social justice in all we do. This includes equity in our employee experiences. We are asking for you to complete “personal details” questions so that we can learn whether employees with different backgrounds and characteristics have significantly different work experiences at King County. This information will only be reported in the aggregate for groups 6 or larger.

For example, information such as a respondent’s length of service will help us to identify whether there are any special issues or any support needed for new recruits. Another example would be a respondent’s gender information helping to identify whether there are any equity issues that we need to explore further.

So please complete the personal details section. It will make the survey more meaningful. It will in no way lead to you being identified.

Your survey answers go directly to our vendor, Confirmit. No one at King County will see your individual data, nor will anyone at King County be able to trace your answers back to you. In addition, results will not be reported for groups with fewer than six respondents.

Any personal details in the questionnaire will not be used to identify individuals, but rather to understand any differences across employee groups within King County.

No. Work unit reports maintain the same level of confidentiality as the department and division level reports. Only work units with 6 or more employees responding to the survey will receive a report. Only questions with 6 or more employees answering will be included in the report.

Division level response rates for the survey will be reported on the Employee Survey webpage (here). Response rates are updated in real time.

Countywide and Department results will be reported back to employees in May. You will see your group’s results when you convene for action planning in May and June.

Since the 2015 survey nearly 600 action plans have been created to address the issues employees raised and the major themes that emerged. These have included work-group level actions like team building and creation of development plans for everyone, and it has included enterprise-wide actions like

• Creation of Investing in YOU, our unified strategy to build a workplace where you have the tools and support to innovate, achieve your career goals and do your best work.
• Launched the King County Mentorship Program.
• Expanded policies on anti-discrimination and anti-harassment.
• Established a Professional Development Scholarship program through the Master Labor Agreement.
• Created the opportunity to use sick leave to volunteer for organizations participating in the Employee Giving Program.
• Expanded the Bridge Fellowship program to provide leadership and development opportunities to more employees.
• Launched comprehensive leadership training for managers and supervisors.
• Executive Constantine has listening sessions with employees, and meets with employees on site visits.
• Multiple departments have worked to improve communications channels and build understanding of division and department priorities.

These responses will be analyzed for themes and patterns. The frequency of these themes and patterns will be reported. Answers that could compromise the anonymity of an employee will not be reported. In addition, comments will not be reported if there are fewer than 20 comments in a work group.

This helps us to identify priorities in different parts of the organization and whether we need to take action on a workgroup, division, department, or a county-wide basis.

We have learned from prior survey experience that high level results can inform high-level actions, but employees may not directly see and feel the impact of their participation. We are using local survey results so that employees can be actively involved in developing action plans that will make their workplace better.

The demographic questions are used to see how employee engagement differs between groups of employees in various demographic groups. Only groups of 6 or larger will be reported on to maintain confidentiality. This information is reviewed with an equity lens so that the County can address any issues that are highlighted by the results.

This year King County will recommend leaders, supervisors and individual contributors take unified action to address the biggest issues identified in the survey. We will make training, tool kits and other resources available to assist.

Please contact your survey representative, listed below.

Brian Roberts, KCIT	Leslie Brown, DPD
Kelli Williams, DES	Janet Parks, OLR
Chris Ynzunza, DNRP	Elizabeth Detels, DHR
Dawn Breen, DAJD	Seth Watson, PSB/Exec
Jodi Ryznar, DPH	Jonathan Larson, Assessor
Ann McBroom, ADR	Shawn Abernethy, Elections
Brad McFuire, Metro Transit	Janine Weihe, Legislative Branch
Cheryl Binetti, DLS	Teresa Bailey, DJA
Susan Eddy, DCHS

 

No. King County will not track your responses back to your individual computer.

You will receive an email from Confirmit. The email address will be KCEmployeeSurvey@us.confirmit.com. The subject of the email will be "Welcome to the King County 2022 Employee Survey".

The online survey does not force a respondent to answer every question, as we are aware that there are always situations where a respondent may be unable to or may not wish to answer a question.

All questions are optional. Even though all the questions are optional we would really appreciate you answering as many as you feel comfortable – the more data we have to support the question, the better we can address issues and make changes in that area.

No. Each survey link is unique. Only one person can use a survey link. Each employee must use the survey link they were emailed.

If you have not yet reached the end of the survey and submitted all responses (you will be prompted at the end of the survey that you have submitted your responses), you can use the back button on the bottom left of the screen to go to the previous page with the question response that you wish to change, and you can then make the change. Once you have made the change, you can click the submit button which will take you to the next page of questions.

Each employee can only access the survey once through their unique link.

Yes, however, after browsing please go back to the beginning of the survey and fill in your responses. If you press the ‘next’ button at the end, your survey is going to be submitted and a blank survey with no responses is then sent back to Confirmit.

The survey can be taken with most browsers, including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox.

Yes. If you need to come out of the online survey midway through completing it, you will be able to save your place and go back to complete your survey at a different time. All you need to do is click on the survey link that was e-mailed to you originally and you will be taken directly to the point where you left the survey previously.

If you have checked your junk email and it isn’t there, please contact your survey representative.

Brian Roberts, KCIT	Leslie Brown, DPD
Kelli Williams, DES	Janet Parks, OLR
Chris Ynzunza, DNRP	Elizabeth Detels, DHR
Dawn Breen, DAJD	Seth Watson, PSB/Exec
Jodi Ryznar, DPH	Jonathan Larson, Assessor
Ann McBroom, ADR	Shawn Abernethy, Elections
Brad McFuire, Metro Transit	Janine Weihe, Legislative Branch
Cheryl Binetti, DLS	Teresa Bailey, DJA
Susan Eddy, DCHS

Please ONLY use the link on the original invitation, or invitations that come directly from Confirmit. If your link from Confirmit takes you to the end of the survey, please contact your survey representative.

Brian Roberts, KCIT	Leslie Brown, DPD
Kelli Williams, DES	Janet Parks, OLR
Chris Ynzunza, DNRP	Elizabeth Detels, DHR
Dawn Breen, DAJD	Jeannie Macnab, PSB/Exec
Jodi Ryznar, DPH	Jonathan Larson, Assessor
Ann McBroom, ADR	Shawn Abernethy, Elections
Brad McFuire, Metro Transit	Janine Weihe, Legislative Branch
Cheryl Binetti, DLS	Teresa Bailey, DJA
Susan Eddy, DCHS

 

Since 2015 the employee engagement survey has been conducted annually so we can better understand what drives employee engagement and monitor if our responses to the survey are having a positive impact. Results of previous surveys can be found here.