Toya Brown wants her voice to be heard.
The Raleigh, NC, mail handler completes the Postal Pulse employee survey each year because she believes in sharing her opinions with USPS leadership.
“You can sit there and gripe to your co-workers, but who is that helping? We have to start looking at the survey for what it is. It is a way to have your voice be heard,” she says.
The survey, which takes about 5 minutes to complete, is administered by Gallup. The questions are designed to produce information that USPS can use to make workplace improvements, and all individual survey responses remain confidential.
Brown offers the following tips to co-workers who want to participate in the latest survey, which is underway from May 14-June 14:
• Use the comments box. “The space is there for a reason. Write your comments down. Management wants your thoughts,” she says.
• Remember that change takes time. “I’ve seen some of my survey comments make a difference, but don’t expect things to happen overnight,” she says.
• Communicate. “Beyond the survey, talk to your managers, talk to your supervisors. You have to keep pressing the matter. Keep talking.”
Brown continues: “We are not only employees. We are also a family. We should be able to treat each other with respect and honesty. We can’t do that unless we communicate.”
“Best Practices,” a series on employees who demonstrate on-the-job excellence, appears regularly in Link.