Every two years beginning in 2016, University Compliance and Ethics has conducted a Compliance and Ethics Culture Survey to gauge the overall ethical culture at UCF. The survey provides insights into UCF’s Compliance and Ethics Program, of which culture is a key piece. The office benchmarks the results against prior years’ results and uses the data to identify opportunities for improvements to the Program.
The office of Operational Excellence and Assessment Support facilitates our survey and performs the analysis of responses. We want to thank them for their assistance again this year. All faculty, staff, and student employees were invited through a series of emails to participate via a link to the online survey from March 4, 2024, through April 5, 2024. The 2024 survey was available in English and Spanish.
Initiatives this year, to increase participation, included:
- UCF Marketing and Communications distributing email communications,
- Faculty Senate encouraging faculty participation, and
- UCE directly contacting student employees to encourage participation.
- UCE also hosted a tabling event offering a QR Code for the survey and promoted a prize drawing.
As a result of the additional efforts, UCE achieved a 25.3% response rate, an increase from the 17.7% rate in 2022.
In 2020 at the request of the Audit and Compliance Committee of the Board of Trustees, the survey was administered by Ethisphere, a global leader in ethical business practices. Ethisphere designates companies as a “World’s Most Ethical Company” and benchmarked our results against corporations worldwide. In response to the 2020 survey results addressing bullying and perceptions of leadership, UCE implemented a series of initiatives including: increased communications on our non-retaliation policy, improved closing the loop on closed investigations, leveraged leadership in compliance and ethics messaging, developed a new IntegrityLine video tutorial, collaborated with the Student Government Association Judicial Branch to introduce the IntegrityLine tutorial to students, revised the IntegrityLine intake and close out processes, added a “Case Corner” section to the IntegrityStar newsletter, included a video message from the president on the importance of the Code of Conduct in the Code training, training efforts on civility in the workplace, and created a supervisor toolkit for handling concerns from employees.
The 2024 Culture Survey results reflect:
- Reports of experienced or witnessed bullying decreased another 2% from 2022 with a 6% overall decrease since 2018. (11% reported bullying)
- Reports on observed bullying by group also decreased overall since 2020.
During this time, IntegrityLine reports containing the issue type Offensive or Inappropriate Communications also decreased from 88 in 2020, down to 33 in 2023.
The most significant trends identified in the 2024 results are the positive trends related to employee perceptions of managers and senior leadership.
- There was a 3% increase in employees responding that they believe our senior leadership team acts ethically at all times (69% responded favorably), bringing UCF in line with the 2020 corporate benchmark of 69.2%.
- There was a 2% increase in the belief that senior leadership promotes the importance of ethical behavior throughout the university (at 79%), just below the 2020 benchmark of 80%.
- Two percent (2%) more employees reported believing their manager is committed to ethical conduct (89%), which is in line with the 2020 corporate benchmark of 88.9%.
- There was another 2% increase in reported comfort of employees approaching their manager with issues or questions related to ethical conduct (87%), bringing UCF close to the 88.6% benchmark.
- Three percent (3%) more employees reported that their manager is consistently a role model for ethical behavior and demonstrates the importance of integrity and ethical behavior (86%) above the 85% benchmark.
- Three percent (3%) more employees believe their manager complies with the non-retaliation policy with 81% reporting favorably, compared to the 84.4% benchmark.
Six Year Trends
- Employees responding that they had observed misconduct over the last 12 months decreased overall 8% in the last six years.
- Even though there was a 1% increase from 2022, employees responding that they were asked to commit misconduct is down 4% overall in the last six years.
- Of those employees who responded that they observed misconduct or were asked to commit misconduct, only 37% (96 employees) responded that they reported it to UCF. This is a dip from the 41% in 2022. However, this is a 16% overall increase from 2018.
- Satisfaction levels dipped 6% from 2022, but the six-year trend still represents a 17% increase from 2018.
The decreased reporting noted in this year’s responses will be monitored alongside the UCF IntegrityLine annual reporting rates. University Compliance and Ethics will repeat the Compliance and Ethics Culture Survey in 2026, and the office will continue efforts to achieve a higher response rate to ensure the most accurate results.
Contact Information
University Compliance and Ethics
4365 Andromeda Loop N.
Millican Hall 396
Orlando, FL 32816-0001
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