Lisa Watson

Northwest College employees are largely happy working at the campus in Powell, as the latest employee satisfaction survey results show.

Results were published during the most recent board of trustees meeting held last week. Overall, the results of the PACE (Personal Assessment of the College Environment) survey came back positively for the college, with staff and faculty ranking the institution favorably to work for.

The survey, which was established by the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research at North Carolina State University, has been administered every two years in the spring at Northwest since 2016. The survey assesses the college alongside all participating community colleges across four campus climate factors: institutional structure, student focus, supervisory relationships, and teamwork. It utilizes a five-point scale where one equals “strongly disagree" and five equals “strongly agree.”

In this year’s results, the overall mean score came out to 3.986, scoring higher than PACE’s norm base (comprising all colleges using the survey), the small institution category, and NWC’s previous survey conducted in 2024. The score means that, on average, the employees responded positively to the questions.

According to results presented by Northwest’s institutional research manager, Lisa Smith, NWC faculty and staff felt most positively about understanding their responsibilities regarding anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies, feeling pride in their work for the college, and that their job is relevant to the institution’s mission.

“When I look back at our past implementations, all of these responses are quite a bit higher than they were when we first started conducting the survey,” Smith said.

“There are definitely good movements being made and employees tend to be pretty satisfied with a lot of the things that are happening at the college.”

Survey respondents also answered a handful of questions significantly more positively than most other relevant respondents. Those questions related largely to open and transparent information communication within the college, a strong sense of cooperation between faculty and staff, and a feeling that college operations and feedback are handled appropriately.

This year also saw an increase in the overall response rate from college employees, rising to 53% as compared to 50% in 2024. Broken down by factor, this year Northwest scored significantly higher than both comparison groups and the 2024 survey in institutional structure and teamwork. The results from student focus and supervisory relationships saw comparable scores to other colleges and marginally under the already high 2024 score.

Although the results were largely positive for Northwest, there are still areas that the college scored lower. According to concerns expressed by respondents, fair compensation, opportunities for advancement within the institution and professional development are the biggest pain points. This is not the first survey with those as the lowest ranked items, with the 2024 report highlighting similar concerns.

Speaking to those concerns was Northwest College president Lisa Watson, who mentioned some relief in the form of annual, consistent compensation increases but reiterated that pay and growth opportunities are still areas that need to be addressed.

“Compensation is one of those things that is just so hard for us because we’re not in an open market. This is a government thing so we’ve had to advocate really hard with our legislators and the governor for support. If our funding formula isn’t designed to sustain us in a stable manner, that can make it even more frustrating.” Watson said.

“It definitely takes a village and then it takes some support by the state and our legislators and other people to keep us healthy.”

While the college will host the next employee satisfaction survey in 2028, next year will see a student engagement survey and give the student population the chance to express how they are feeling about their education at Northwest.