The Problem With Assuming We Already Know the Problem
Yesterday, during a conversation with HEIAXIS, I had an opportunity to discuss the relationship between employee engagement, organizational conditions, and institutional effectiveness.
One subject that received considerable attention was workforce assessment and the role it can play in helping institutional leaders understand what is happening within their organizations.
The discussion brought me back to a question I have encountered repeatedly throughout more than 25 years in higher education administration:
How often do organizations attempt to solve a problem before determining whether they understand what is causing it?
Consider an institution experiencing declining student retention.
Leadership might respond by increasing outreach, introducing new student support initiatives, changing procedures, or establishing additional performance expectations.
Those responses may be entirely appropriate.
But what if the institution is also experiencing employee disengagement, communication breakdowns, staffing limitations, or unclear departmental responsibilities?
What if employees are spending considerable time correcting problems that originate elsewhere in the institution?
What if the very people responsible for implementing student success initiatives lack the organizational support necessary to carry them out effectively?
In these circumstances, the visible problem may represent only part of a much larger organizational picture.
This is where structured workforce assessment becomes particularly useful.
However, not every organizational concern requires the same type or depth of assessment.
Understanding those differences is important before deciding what to measure.
Assessment Begins With the Question, Not the Instrument
One of the most common mistakes organizations can make is selecting an assessment instrument before clearly defining what they need to learn.
A survey can produce useful information, but that information is only as valuable as its relevance to the questions leadership is attempting to answer.
For example, measuring employee satisfaction may help determine how employees perceive their working environment.
It does not necessarily explain why a particular department experiences repeated processing errors.
Similarly, measuring employee engagement can provide information about employees' relationships with their work, but it may not fully explain why information repeatedly fails to move between departments.
These questions require different approaches.
In organizational assessment, three broad approaches are especially useful:
Targeted diagnosis of an identified concern.
Initial measurement of foundational workforce conditions.
Comprehensive examination of interconnected organizational conditions.
Each approach provides a different level of information and serves a different purpose.
Understanding those distinctions helps organizations avoid collecting large amounts of information that may not answer the questions they actually need to investigate.
1. Targeted Workforce Diagnostics: Investigating a Known Concern
Sometimes an organization has already identified a recurring problem.
Employee turnover may be increasing.
A department may be experiencing persistent errors.
Staffing shortages may be affecting service delivery.
Employees may report frustration with communication or unclear expectations.
In these situations, the objective is not necessarily to evaluate every aspect of the organizational environment.
Instead, leadership needs to investigate conditions potentially contributing to the identified concern.
A targeted workforce diagnostic begins by defining the problem and developing questions around possible contributing factors.
For example, consider a college experiencing recurring delays in financial aid processing.
The initial assumption might be that employees require additional training.
However, further examination could reveal several alternative explanations:
Responsibilities are not clearly assigned.
Information from other departments arrives inconsistently.
Staffing capacity does not match processing demands.
Employees must complete repeated corrections.
Supervisory expectations conflict with available resources.
The diagnostic process examines evidence relevant to these possibilities rather than assuming one explanation is correct.
This distinction matters.
If the primary issue is insufficient staffing capacity, additional training alone may have limited impact.
If the concern involves unclear departmental responsibilities, revised employee performance expectations may not resolve it.
And if the problem is inconsistent information flowing between departments, a solution confined to one office may be inadequate.
What Can a Targeted Diagnostic Reveal?
A well-designed diagnostic can help distinguish between:
Individual performance concerns and broader operational problems.
Isolated incidents and recurring organizational patterns.
Training needs and structural limitations.
Communication difficulties and unclear process ownership.
Resource constraints and inefficient procedures.
It can also establish a baseline before an institution introduces major operational changes.
The important principle is that a targeted diagnostic should be driven by the problem being investigated.
Its purpose is not to measure everything. It is to examine the conditions most relevant to a clearly defined concern.
2. Workforce Climate Snapshots: Establishing an Organizational Baseline
Not every institution begins with a clearly identified problem.
Sometimes leadership simply wants a better understanding of the workforce environment.
Employees may be meeting expectations, institutional operations may appear stable, and there may be no immediate organizational crisis.
Nevertheless, leadership may lack reliable information about employee satisfaction, engagement, workload, communication, organizational support, or clarity of responsibilities.
An initial workforce climate assessment, sometimes described as a snapshot, provides a structured way to examine those conditions.
One approach is to measure six foundational workforce areas.
Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction concerns how employees evaluate their working conditions and employment experiences.
It may include perceptions of supervision, organizational practices, working relationships, and the overall workplace environment.
However, satisfaction should not automatically be interpreted as engagement.
An employee may be satisfied with their position while feeling relatively disconnected from the work itself.
Work Engagement
Work engagement examines the relationship between employees and their work.
It considers the degree to which employees experience energy, involvement, and commitment in carrying out their responsibilities.
An employee can remain engaged even while experiencing frustration with particular organizational conditions.
Likewise, an employee may report generally positive working conditions while demonstrating limited engagement.
Understanding the distinction helps avoid treating satisfaction and engagement as interchangeable concepts.
Workload
Workload assessment considers employees' perceptions of job demands and the resources available to meet them.
This is particularly important in organizations where employees routinely assume additional responsibilities, cover vacancies, or compensate for inefficient processes.
A department may appear productive while depending on unsustainable levels of individual effort.
Without examining workload, leadership may overlook conditions that could eventually affect employee well-being, service quality, or operational continuity.
Communication
Communication includes more than whether employees receive information.
It also involves clarity, consistency, timeliness, and whether information reaches the people who need it.
An organization may distribute frequent communications while still experiencing uncertainty about responsibilities or expectations.
Consequently, communication effectiveness should not be measured solely by the quantity of information being shared.
Organizational Support
Perceived organizational support concerns whether employees believe their institution values their contributions and cares about their well-being.
This includes more than formal policies or statements of appreciation.
Employees develop perceptions of organizational support through daily experiences involving supervision, available resources, recognition, fairness, and institutional responses to concerns.
Role Clarity
Role clarity concerns employees' understanding of their responsibilities, performance expectations, and decision-making authority.
When responsibilities overlap or remain poorly defined, employees may experience confusion, duplicated work, or unnecessary conflict.
Role clarity becomes particularly important when several departments share responsibility for a single institutional process.
Interpreting the Initial Findings
These six areas can provide a useful baseline of workforce conditions.
However, an initial assessment should not be mistaken for a complete organizational diagnosis.
For example, a finding that employees report low organizational support does not, by itself, establish why those perceptions exist.
Similarly, concerns about communication do not automatically identify the department, leadership practice, or process responsible.
The snapshot identifies patterns that deserve attention.
It provides an initial picture of the organizational environment without necessarily establishing the causes behind every finding.
That is both its strength and its limitation.
3. Comprehensive Workforce Assessment: Examining the Relationships Between Organizational Conditions
Some organizational challenges are more complex than an initial assessment can adequately explain.
An institution may experience several concerns simultaneously:
Employee turnover is increasing.
Workload complaints are becoming more frequent.
Departments disagree about responsibilities.
Employees express declining confidence in leadership.
Operational errors continue despite repeated procedural changes.
Individually, these may appear to be separate problems.
Collectively, they may reflect interconnected organizational conditions.
A comprehensive workforce assessment examines those relationships more deeply.
It may begin with foundational measures of employee satisfaction, work engagement, workload, communication, organizational support, and role clarity.
It then extends the inquiry to additional areas.
Leadership Conditions
Leadership assessment considers organizational experiences associated with supervisory practices, communication, expectations, support, and trust.
The objective is not simply to determine whether employees approve of individual leaders.
Rather, it is to investigate how leadership-related conditions may influence employee experiences and organizational functioning.
Cross-Functional Relationships
Many operational problems develop where responsibilities cross departmental boundaries.
A process may involve Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Accounts, Academic Affairs, and Student Services.
Each department may perform its assigned responsibilities, yet the overall process may remain inefficient.
Examining cross-functional relationships helps identify coordination difficulties, inconsistent expectations, and information gaps that may not appear in departmental performance reports.
Behavioral and Organizational Risk
Organizational conditions can influence how employees respond to workplace demands.
Persistent frustration, inadequate support, unclear expectations, or deteriorating trust may contribute to disengagement, withdrawal, or other workplace concerns.
Assessment can help identify risk indicators and patterns warranting further examination.
It is important, however, not to assume that any single survey result proves a particular behavior will occur.
Assessment findings should inform inquiry and organizational decision-making rather than serve as unsupported predictions about individual employees.
Why Comprehensive Assessment Requires Interpretation
Broader measurement introduces additional information, but more information is not automatically better information.
The challenge is interpreting relationships among findings while considering the institution's structure, staffing, policies, and operational environment.
Suppose employees report high work engagement alongside significant workload concerns.
Those results are not necessarily contradictory.
Employees may care deeply about their responsibilities while struggling with organizational demands.
A comprehensive assessment should help leadership understand how those conditions coexist and what implications they may have.
The objective is to move beyond identifying individual indicators toward understanding the organizational environment as a connected system.
Comparing the Three Assessment Approaches
Although targeted diagnostics, workforce snapshots, and comprehensive assessments may examine some of the same organizational conditions, their purposes differ.
Assessment approachPrimary questionFocusTargeted DiagnosticWhy might this particular problem be occurring?Conditions associated with a defined concernWorkforce Climate SnapshotWhat do our foundational workforce indicators reveal?Initial measurement of six workforce conditionsComprehensive AssessmentHow do multiple workforce and organizational conditions interact?Broader measurement, deeper interpretation, and interconnected organizational concerns
The most appropriate approach depends on what leadership already knows, what remains uncertain, and what decisions the organization needs to make.
A more extensive assessment is not automatically the better choice.
Sometimes a narrowly focused investigation provides the information needed.
In other circumstances, a broader organizational examination is necessary.
Why Assessment Findings Need Institutional Context
Workforce assessments produce information about organizational conditions, but institutional context remains essential to interpreting the findings.
A small college with a handful of administrative employees operates differently from a university with multiple campuses and specialized departments.
The same measured concern may have different causes and consequences depending on the organizational environment.
Consider two institutions reporting similar workload difficulties.
At one institution, the primary concern may be insufficient staffing.
At another, staffing levels may be adequate, but inefficient procedures and duplicated responsibilities create unnecessary work.
The assessment results may look similar.
The appropriate organizational responses may be quite different.
This is why meaningful assessment should consider both structured measurement and the perspectives of employees familiar with daily operations.
Employees frequently recognize problems that are difficult to identify through institutional reports alone.
They may understand where information is delayed, which processes require repeated corrections, or how informal workarounds have developed.
At the same time, employee observations should be examined alongside other available evidence.
Neither perspective should replace the other.
Institutional data provides measurable indicators. Engaged employees provide the eyes and ears on the ground. Together, they help leadership understand what those indicators may mean.
When an Extended Organizational Examination May Be Necessary
There are circumstances in which even a comprehensive assessment provides only part of the information leadership needs.
Some operational problems emerge across repeated processing cycles, staffing transitions, regulatory deadlines, or organizational changes.
A brief investigation may not capture those variations.
For example, a college's financial aid operation may function differently during peak enrollment, disbursement processing, reconciliation, or the end of an academic term.
An extended examination allows organizational conditions to be observed across time rather than at one point.
One approach involves embedding an experienced operational professional within a department while examining workforce conditions and organizational processes.
This combines direct operational participation with longitudinal assessment.
Such an approach can provide insight into differences between formal procedures and actual practices.
It may also reveal how employees adapt to staffing limitations, inconsistent instructions, or changing institutional expectations.
However, extended operational participation should be structured carefully, with clearly defined responsibilities, appropriate oversight, confidentiality safeguards, and a distinction between observation, operational support, and formal assessment.
The educational lesson is straightforward:
Some organizational conditions cannot be adequately understood through a single measurement period.
Assessment Should Also Identify What Is Working
There is another important consideration that is sometimes overlooked.
Workforce assessment should not be designed exclusively to identify problems.
What happens when findings indicate strong engagement, effective communication, clear responsibilities, supportive leadership, or healthy organizational relationships?
Those findings deserve serious attention.
Understanding why certain conditions are working well can help leadership preserve successful practices and evaluate whether they may be appropriate elsewhere.
For example, one department may consistently report strong organizational support despite facing substantial operational demands.
Examining that department's communication practices, supervisory relationships, and resource allocation could offer insights useful to other areas.
However, leaders should avoid assuming that a successful practice can be transferred without considering differences in staffing, responsibilities, and organizational context.
The objective is not to create competition among departments.
It is to understand the organizational conditions that support effective performance.
A useful assessment should identify both vulnerabilities requiring attention and strengths deserving preservation.
What Happens After the Assessment?
An assessment can produce meaningful findings without producing meaningful organizational improvement.
The difference often depends on what leadership does next.
Employees may participate in surveys, discussions, or organizational reviews with the expectation that their contributions will inform decisions.
If findings are never communicated or acted upon, the process may contribute to additional skepticism.
For that reason, assessment should be connected to follow-through.
An effective improvement process generally includes several activities:
Prioritizing Findings
Not every concern requires an immediate response. Leadership should distinguish urgent operational issues from longer-term organizational conditions.
Determining Responsibilities
Improvement initiatives require clear ownership. Without assigned responsibilities, even well-developed recommendations may remain unimplemented.
Establishing Measures of Progress
Leadership should identify what improvement would look like and how progress will be evaluated.
Communicating With Employees
Employees should understand what leadership learned, what actions are being considered, and which concerns may require additional investigation.
Reassessing Conditions
Follow-up measurement helps determine whether interventions correspond with meaningful improvement or whether further adjustment is necessary.
A 30/60/90-day planning framework can provide structure for these activities, although the appropriate timeline depends on the nature of the findings.
Some issues can be addressed quickly.
Others require more substantial organizational decisions.
In either case, the value of an assessment should not be measured solely by the number of findings it produces.
Its usefulness depends partly on whether those findings improve organizational understanding and decision-making.
Why Workforce Assessment Matters for Student Success
Throughout my professional work, I have often returned to one central observation:
The student experience cannot outperform the staff experience.
This is not intended to suggest that employee engagement alone determines student success.
Students encounter a wide range of circumstances affecting enrollment, persistence, and academic progress.
Financial concerns, academic preparation, personal responsibilities, and external conditions can all influence their experiences.
However, institutions depend on employees to help students navigate those challenges.
Financial aid professionals must communicate eligibility requirements and resolve processing issues.
Academic advisors must help students understand their educational pathways.
Student accounts personnel must communicate financial obligations.
Faculty and student services professionals must respond to academic and personal concerns.
The effectiveness of those interactions can be influenced by workload, organizational support, role clarity, communication, and departmental coordination.
Consequently, workforce assessment offers institutions another perspective through which to examine conditions that may affect student services.
It should complement, rather than replace, direct measures of student outcomes and institutional performance.
These Principles Extend Beyond Higher Education
Although these examples focus on colleges and universities, the underlying organizational challenges are not unique to higher education.
Healthcare systems, nonprofit organizations, professional service firms, government agencies, and private businesses also depend on employees working within complex organizational environments.
Communication barriers, unclear responsibilities, excessive workload, inadequate supervisory support, and disengagement can affect organizations in any industry.
The specific assessment measures and methods may need to be adapted to the organization's purpose, structure, and workforce.
But the central principle remains applicable:
Before organizations decide what needs to change, they should develop a reliable understanding of the conditions they are attempting to improve.
Final Reflection: Are We Measuring What We Need to Understand?
Workforce assessment should not begin with the assumption that every institution needs the same questionnaire, methodology, or intervention.
An organization investigating a specific operational concern may benefit from a targeted diagnostic.
An organization seeking an initial understanding of its workforce environment may benefit from a standardized snapshot.
An organization experiencing interconnected leadership, engagement, and operational concerns may require a more comprehensive examination.
And some challenges may require observation and assessment across an extended period.
Each approach has advantages and limitations.
The responsibility of leadership is to determine what information is needed, how that information should be collected, and how the findings will inform organizational decisions.
Ultimately, workforce assessment is not about collecting more data simply because technology makes it possible.
It is about asking better questions, selecting appropriate measures, listening to employees, and interpreting the findings within the realities of the organization.
The most valuable assessment is not necessarily the most extensive one. It is the one that helps leadership better understand the organization it is responsible for leading.
Continue the Conversation
This article expands on the discussion of workforce conditions, employee engagement, and institutional effectiveness during my recent conversation with HEIAXIS.
Watch the HEIAXIS interview:
https://youtu.be/FR1Da2idNX8
Learn more about workforce assessment approaches and professional development resources:
Rosenboom Workforce Institute
https://www.rosenboomworkforceinstitute.com
Today's Question Worth Asking
When your organization identifies a recurring challenge, how does leadership determine what information is needed before deciding how to respond?