Check out the population structure of UAMS, the State of Arkansas, and the United States.
 

 

The main purpose of the employee survey, which was distributed in February of 1997, was to investigate employees’ attitudes related to human resource issues, especially regarding the climate supporting diversity on the UAMS campus.  Four hundred and fifty-nine surveys were analyzed out of 1998 samples.  The minority stratified samples were randomly selected from our employee database based on their EEOC categories (Asian, African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Caucasion).  Therefore, 6 Middle Eastern employees and one person who wrote down "human" were not presented in the attached graphs.  The responses from each groups were good except for the African American group.  This situation may need further investigation for not responding is a response.  Please refer to the attached graphs regarding response ratio of each group.

High Job Satisfaction: employees overall expressed high job satisfaction.  We obtained  very positive responses on questions regarding perceived job importance, enjoying their jobs, getting a sense of accomplishment from their jobs, and whether UAMS is a good place to work.
The minorities’ scores looked quite different in this respect; women had lower scores on enjoying their jobs than man, and scores were even lower for African Americans, Hispanic, and Native Americans.  Job satisfaction was linear by age, with satisfaction increasing with age.  Our results also indicated that the more education employees had, the less job satisfaction they responded.

Adequacy of Training: overall responses to the adequacy of training were fairly positive.  Yet the demographic difference in responses needs to be addressed here.  African American respondents had the lowest average on the adequacy of their training.  African American, Hispanic, and Native American respondents also had the lowest scores on opportunities to attend training classes, especially classes to promote professional development.

Supervisor-subordinate Relationship: the lower rated questions regarding relationship with immediate supervisors were on "showing favoritism," "reacts defensively to criticism," "handling discipline fairly," and "taking action on problems."  Most of the questions in this domain varied little by demographic subgroups, except when analyzed by race and by occupational classification.  African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans responded significantly lower on these questions than did Caucasian and Asian/Pacific Rim respondents.  Patient care professional staff, skilled trades, and support services also had lower scores on supervisory questions than other occupational classifications.

Participative Management/Empowerment: women and racial/ethnic minorities at UAMS do not perceive they have as much influence on decision making as white males.  This statement may be intertwined with the aforementioned supervisor-subordinate relationship.

Dissatisfaction with Pay and Promotion Opportunities: employees perceived that hiring and promotion decisions are not based on qualifications and merit, but on other considerations.  Women and racial/ethnic minorities were especially pessimistic about their opportunities to move up at UAMS.  Women also agreed less than men that employees were rewarded for excellent performance.  African Americans and employees from the Middle East had the lowest scores on the promotion questions.  Employees were more satisfied with benefits than with pay.  Eighty-one percent of the employees agreed that UAMS offered good employee benefits.

Perceived Neutral Support for Diversity from UAMS: most frequently chosen answer on questions in this domain was "neither agree nor disagree."  However, the sexual harassment policy had a higher publicity than some of the diversity initiatives.  Questions regarding individuals guilty of sexual harassment and discrimination at UAMS had even higher percentage of neutral responses (71 and 68% respectively.)
The overall results on diversity questions were moderately positive; employees tended to respond that the climate for diversity was good.  Employees who stated they had a disability were more positive about UAMS’s accommodations for disabled employees.  However, it is particularly unfortunate that only a very few Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American and other minority employees responded to the survey.