Director’s Corner – Measuring Teacher Satisfaction

In other sections of the newsletter, we have focused mainly on customer satisfaction. Let’s shift our attention to a different area of satisfaction that impacts program quality and supportive environments for children: teacher satisfaction.

Staff turnover can have a huge impact on family satisfaction, the program’s bottom line, and the ever-important consistency that children thrive on. Members of leadership should spend time gathering and analyzing employee feedback just as they focus on family satisfaction.

The tips for designing surveys shared in this newsletter apply to creating surveys for teachers.  Areas that you may want to measure include satisfaction with:

• Orientation and onboarding
• Professional development opportunities
• Resources and materials
• Curriculum tools
• Policies and procedures
• Program culture and support
• Relationships with peers and members of leadership

Again, anonymity may be necessary to garner the most honest results.

Here is the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey from the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership that you can use.

Mock exit interviews.

One tool you could use to gather feedback is your program’s exit interview questionnaire. If your program does not currently have an exit interview procedure, click here.

Conducting mock exit interviews allows members of leadership to uncover and address areas of dissatisfaction before employees decide to move on.  To conduct mock exit interviews, create an anonymous document and ask employees to imagine that tomorrow is their last day on the job.  Ask them to share their feedback as if they were no longer going to be a part of the team.

Use a mix of ratings, yes/no questions, and open-ended questions to encourage teachers to fully express their feedback. Assure employees that all information will remain confidential and anonymous.

The results of this activity may be eye-opening for members of leadership, but they are valuable nonetheless. Teachers may appreciate the fact that you are attempting to be proactive to address the areas of their job that they are not happy with.

Once results are compiled, summarize the findings at a team meeting. Work with the team to prioritize the needs expressed in the results and to address areas of improvement.

Here is a link to an informative article about conducting teacher satisfaction surveys.

For the main article Measuring and Boosting Satisfaction, CLICK HERE

For the article Gathering Feedback, CLICK HERE

For the article Questions to Ask, CLICK HERE

For the article Responding to Feedback, CLICK HERE