UCAR

As an organization, we advocate for transparency around our DEI work and we encourage other organizations to use our published data and culture survey questions to benchmark your progress and conduct similar studies at your own workplaces.

We welcome mutual opportunities to benchmark surveys across different organizations in our community and to learn from each others' successes and challenges. If you are interested in talking more about anything related to our culture survey results or other data metrics, please contact ODEI.

UCAR DEI Strategic Plan

Our current strategies for increasing the diversity of our workforce, and improving our equitable practices and inclusive culture are laid out in UCAR's DEI Strategic Plan. This is a living document and is updated on an ongoing basis as new challenges and opportunities arise.

Our strategies for measuring our progress and our latest data are provided below. Please feel free to explore!

Workforce Demographics

A summary of our workforce demographics is shown below. We are currently working on interactive dashboards to allow visitors to explore our data further, and will make these available when complete. We expect to update most of our numbers after the upcoming Workplace Culture Survey.

 

Pie charts indicating 5.5% LGBQ+, 3% identify as neurodivergent, and 5.5% have a disability

 

Bar graph labeled Workforce Demographics by Gender (2010-2024). The left y-axis is labeled Percent Women and the bottom x-axis has years 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The key indicates a light blue color for Stem + Management and a darker blue indicates Management. In 2010 there are about 30-32% women in Stem + Management and Management positions. This percentage generally increases across the bar chart into 2024.Bar graph labeled Workforce Demographics by Underrepresented Racial Identity (2010-2024). The left y-axis is labeled Percent Underrepresented Racial Identity and the bottom x-axis has years 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The key indicates a light blue color for Stem + Management and a darker blue indicates Management. In 2010 there are less than 5% underrepresented racial identities in Stem + Management and 0% in Management positions. This percentage significantly increases across the bar chart into 2024.

Calculating benchmarks

For our scientific and engineering workforce, UCAR has committed to a goal of matching our workforce demographics to those of the available talent pool by 2029. We calculate those benchmarks using the NSF’s Report on Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities, which is released every 2 years and includes the racial and gender demographics of individuals who have graduated with bachelors, masters, and PhDs in each field. We use these data along with our hiring data to determine the demographic composition of the graduates of the majors that we hire from, looking back to a year that matches the number of years of experience that we require for each position level.

For example, an Associate Scientist I may require a Bachelors degree in Earth Science, with no years of experience, and so we would look at the demographic composition of graduates from that degree and major for the most recent year and expect our ASIs as a group to match those demographics. In contrast, a Project Scientist IV requiring a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences requires at least 15 years of experience, and so we would use the demographics of the PhD graduating class from 15 years ago. In this way, we are able to determine the expected composition of each of our job categories and use these as the goals for our work.

Workplace Culture

Workplace Culture Survey

UCAR conducts in-depth all-staff anonymous Workplace Culture Surveys every four years, administered and analyzed by an external company. These vendors also provide UCAR with a list of recommendations. The first was conducted in Spring 2017, and the second in Spring 2021. We are preparing for our next Culture Survey, which will take place in 2025.

The goals of these surveys are to better understand the workplace environment and experience for our staff, to get recommendations from expert consultants in ways to create a more inclusive and welcoming culture throughout the organization, and to measure the effectiveness of the actions put in place in response to previous years’ recommendations.

These reports do not sit on a shelf: our Office of DEI partners with NSF NCAR DEI and UCP DEI to address the recommendations from each Workplace Culture Survey at the institutional level, and we have so far been on track with addressing every single recommendation made to us in the years between surveys. In addition, we work with every Lab, Program, and Office across UCAR, NSF NCAR, and UCP to develop their own Culture Survey goals and Implementation Plans to address challenges and opportunities that surfaced in the survey that are particular to their groups. We assist all of the LPOs in measuring their progress towards their self-determined goals.

For all of the information and results from the Workplace Culture Surveys in 2017 and 2021, please see the links below.

We are eager to partner with anyone who wishes to benchmark their culture survey results against ours. Our survey instrument is freely available to anyone who wishes to use our questions verbatim, or we can partner with you to identify questions in each of our surveys that are similar enough to do an effective comparison. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at odei@ucar.edu if you are interested in working on this together!

Pulse Surveys

In addition to the very comprehensive Workplace Culture Surveys that take place every four years. UCAR additionally works with an external vendor to administer anonymous Pulse Surveys every 6 months to get a snapshot of employees’ satisfaction, attitudes, and ideas about organizational culture and current initiatives. A number of the Pulse Survey questions are aligned with the Workplace Culture Survey questions to give us intermediate data throughout the 4-year Workplace Culture Survey cycle.