Why Participate

Results Best Practices

Learning from your peers is at the heart of the Great Colleges Program. Below are several examples of how past participants have promoted their recognition and utilized their survey data.

Recognition & Logo Use

The immediate benefit of participating in The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For Program is national exposure. Past participants have been able to leverage their achievement in a number of ways. Many institutions utilized the Great Colleges logo on their websites, often targeting HR and recruitment initiatives.

Some schools took even greater advantage of their recognition as a Great College.

Here are some specific examples provided by several schools:

• Kennesaw State University incorporated the logo in recruitment advertisements.
• Eastern Kentucky University created a large banner and hung it over a busy street in Richmond, Kentucky.
• George Mason University created a special recognition leave program and distributed pins to its faculty and staff.
• Salisbury University incorporated the logo in a branding advertisement that highlighted the many benefits of working at the institution.

Here are a few additional examples:

“We installed banners with the logo on the light poles around campus. We also had tee shirts with the logo on them printed and gave them away as prizes at our benefits fair”

“We have used [the logo] on a large banner we had made and have it displayed in our lobby.”

“We put it on the HR homepage for our external audience and on our portal for the internal audience. We developed a recognition opportunity based on it -- a 1/2 day of recognition leave called "A Great Place to Work "Force" Award" and we made buttons with the logo thanking the community for the recognition. The buttons were given out at meetings, fairs (Faculty/Staff Enrichment Day and new faculty orientation), and at the HR front desk.”

“[We used the logo on our] website, t-shirts/polo's for employees, stickers for mailing envelopes, banners on campus--in Human Resources, in College entrance way. We added this logo to US NEWS ranking, Military Friendly and made a table tent for all Admission's presentations and other career fairs, or "booth" opportunities.”

“[We’ve included the logo] on our annual employee report.”

“[The logo is displayed] on our website, our Powerpoints, and at our Front Desk.”

Click here for the 2010 Logo License Agreement.

Data Use

Whether or not your institution was recognized in the Great Colleges Program, the survey data collected from your institution will enable you to leverage your results to understand your institution's competitive edge. Please note that some of the Best Practices listed below where developed from utilizing the comprehensive data available in our Additional Reports.

“Although we were recognized in five areas, we also did quite poorly in a few categories. We have prioritized these areas for further investigation and will take action to improve.”

“[We] conducted a formal presentation for our Board of Trustees. [We are also] using the information from the comments to help determine what qualities to look for in leaders as we look towards retirements among our top officers.”

“We developed targeted institutional programming to address areas of institutional challenge.”

“Information was shared with Cabinet. We are also working with our Public Relations department on developing a plan for better communications with our employees (an area for improvement for us).”

“It affirmed much of what we intuitively believed about our institution. However, with most of the college's leadership team in place for only a short time, the survey validated these assumptions. Our weakest area, compensation and benefits, is beyond our direct control. However, the college has set a goal to address its second weakest area, facilities and security, in an aggressive manner.”

“It is being used to help with our first ever strategic plan.”

“Regular senior staff meetings on operationalizing our values more effectively. Introduction of a new seminar for supervisors. Realization that some pockets of the university live our brand/values at a high level and others do not. Backdrop for future benchmarking of an overall community engagement initiative.”

“We created a business process manager to undertake process improvement across the entire university.”

“We had a focused visit on shared governance, communication, and trust from our regional accreditor; and your data was used to prove that we have made significant progress in the area.”

“We have started employee engagement teams to identify the issues at the department level and to propose solutions.”

“We shared the results with the President's Council, then each division head/Dean shared their own results with their staffs. Action Plans were developed in each division/school to address opportunities identified in the survey. The overall university results were shared at the Fall Staff and Fall Faculty meetings, and internal communications worked with HR to develop a piece that was shared with all faculty and staff.”

“We used the feedback in conjunction with another employee opinion survey that we conducted to provide more robust information back to our faculty and staff. Our President discussed the feedback at our Forum meeting and asked faculty and staff to suggest ways we could improve on the areas that received less positive feedback.”

“We used this data as a starting point for focus group discussions on how we can become a better workplace. Was also useful in our current institutional self-study as well as employment branding initiatives.”

“We were the only educational organization to receive a Baldrige Site Visit. It came in very handy.”