Can the Federal Baldrige Survey Measure Workforce Well-being in an Academic Health Center?

INTRODUCTION: Experts suggest health care institutions switch focus from measuring burnout to measuring positive organizational psychology. Concerns include burnout being a late sign of organizational decline. The Baldrige survey is promoted by the U.S. Department of Commerce to measure positive worksite conditions (e.g., workforce wellbeing of industries, including health care and education). For years, the survey has been completed by managers within organizations, but now the same survey is promoted for completion by an organization’s workforce. We tested the structure of the Baldrige survey when completed by an academic health care workforce. In addition, we tested whether the results in an academic worksite correlate with an example metric of an organizational mission. METHODS: In 2015, our academic health center surveyed faculty and staff with the Baldrige survey. The validity of the Baldrige was tested with confirmatory factor analyses. Within the School of Medicine, responses for the Baldrige’s concepts were correlated against a measure of organizational outcome: graduates’ assessments of Departmental educational quality. RESULTS: The structure of the Baldrige survey did not validate when assessed by a workforce (RMSEA = 0.086; CFI = 0.829; TLI = 0.815). None of its concepts correlated with learner reported educational quality. CONCLUSIONS: The Baldrige survey, when administered to a workforce rather than managers, did not appear to measure workforce well-being within an academic health care center. We discourage use of the current survey for this purpose.