If 1/4 is reporting that they feel comfortable reporting a problem, this survey is probably far rosier than reality. A lot of those all-staff opinion surveys claim to be anonymous, but the way they are tallied, if you are in a small department they can be reasonably sure who gave which answers. In my corporate job I would always lie. It's not worth the risk of retaliation, and no one ever acted on the results.
This is the part the aggregate numbers can't capture: the 1-in-4 who say they'd report isn't a measure of courage, rather it's a measure of how many people haven't yet done the math on what reporting actually costs. In smaller offices especially, "anonymous" is just a polite fiction. The chilling effect isn't dramatic or even obvious. People just... stop raising their hands.
The number that should haunt this piece isn't the 32 out of 100. It's the gap between the 78% who still identify with their agency's mission and the 52% who feel attached to the agency itself. That's 26 points of people who believe in the work but no longer believe the institution will let them do it. I don't think that's disengagement as much as it is grief... and institutional knowledge doesn't wait around for grief to resolve; it just leaves, whether by choice or by force.
If 1/4 is reporting that they feel comfortable reporting a problem, this survey is probably far rosier than reality. A lot of those all-staff opinion surveys claim to be anonymous, but the way they are tallied, if you are in a small department they can be reasonably sure who gave which answers. In my corporate job I would always lie. It's not worth the risk of retaliation, and no one ever acted on the results.
This is the part the aggregate numbers can't capture: the 1-in-4 who say they'd report isn't a measure of courage, rather it's a measure of how many people haven't yet done the math on what reporting actually costs. In smaller offices especially, "anonymous" is just a polite fiction. The chilling effect isn't dramatic or even obvious. People just... stop raising their hands.
This is an aside. Does anyone know why the heck TSA agents are non-essential?
Oh yeah, great article, BTW. We’ve got some serious cleaning up to do when this party is over.
The number that should haunt this piece isn't the 32 out of 100. It's the gap between the 78% who still identify with their agency's mission and the 52% who feel attached to the agency itself. That's 26 points of people who believe in the work but no longer believe the institution will let them do it. I don't think that's disengagement as much as it is grief... and institutional knowledge doesn't wait around for grief to resolve; it just leaves, whether by choice or by force.