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Director's NoteHank Revercomb |
New Personnel System
On 26 June 2011 a State act was passed requiring the UW-Madison to develop a new personnel system specific to the needs of the University and to implement the system by 01 July 2013. For over a year now, the University has involved faculty, academic staff, labor, administration, non-represented Classified employees and students in working to define this new system.
This effort has resulted in the draft of “A Strategic Plan for a New UW-Madison Human Resources System” aimed at using “Thoughtful Design” to create a “Workforce and Community for the 21st Century” to support the “University Mission and Vision” of a “model public university.”
You have undoubtedly seen Denny Hackel’s emails regarding the role he is playing in representing our interests in this process. John Roberts and Jenny Hackel have also been staying abreast of the process and introducing suggestions and critiques. The draft plan is now available for campus review, with submittal to the Board of Regents planned for December. So if we have suggestions to improve the plan, we must act soon to express our concerns.
An Extraordinary Opportunity
This is an extraordinary opportunity for UW-Madison and also for SSEC to establish a Human Resources (HR) system that is better suited to our specific activities than the current system developed by the State many years ago. That being said, I believe that the primary early goals of this activity should be to address areas of serious concern that clearly hold us back from being as effective and successful as we can be, and “to do no harm”.
This perspective is consistent with a major consideration of the HR strategic plan (p16) to focus on “Changes that address the most pressing issues facing the UW-Madison employees and managers.” After all, the UW-Madison is a very successful and competitive educational university (scoring in the top 10 universities in the nation in many fields) and major research university (remaining in the top five for research support for over 20 years). We just need to find ways to handle the slowly decreasing percentage of State support.
In this spirit, my goal for what SSEC will realize from this new system is enhanced flexibility for rewarding excellence, through:
- Merit pay availability: reestablishing this mechanism for rewarding outstanding performance, and
- Less restrictive advancement mechanisms: reduced barriers to earned pay increases and title changes that will allow our wages to become more competitive with the best research universities and industry as well.
Also, the new system should not impose changes to practices of individual units of the University that are already working well, for the sake of uniformity. That is part of the problem with the current system.
The Plan's Objectives
In most aspects, the current draft of the plan seems to be consistent with these SSEC desires. The plan is well written, is set up for phased implementation that allows for future modification and growth, and has well-stated general objectives. These include, creating a “more efficient and effective system”, "recruit and retain the best faculty and staff, and reward merit”, “enhance diversity in order to ensure excellence in education and research”, enabled by “having authority over… creating job titles, developing pay programs, and designing recruitment processes…”.
The plan defines a category of University Staff that are hourly workers to replace the Classified Staff category, and redefines the Academic Staff category to include all salaried staff. Under the new plan, all categories would have governance rights and there is a commitment to providing just-cause and due process standards for all. The plan would eliminate the current mandatory placement of Classified employees who have been laid off, but it would provide referrals, placement service, and counseling support.
An Area of Concern
I would like to encourage you to have a look at the HR plan and offer your input. As an example and to get your response, I have one area of serious concern that is presented under “Fostering and Managing Talent”, p 43-47. What is presented here “will require that all units implement a standard performance management cycle that includes the following as a minimum standard:
- Setting goals that incorporate both work and employee development goals,
- Conducting a mid-year check-in with each employee, and
- providing a year-end written evaluation that assesses employee progress against agreed-upon goals and identifies development needs and opportunities.
I believe that forcing such a schedule violates the “do no harm principal.” At SSEC we have over several years come up with a flexible annual review system that I think is working very well. Our system allows individual staff or supervisors to request a review, but also allows staff to opt out if they feel no need in a given year.
I think the proposed system will force many of us to spend significantly more time than is necessary in management, rather than promoting our key endeavors. The plan would also require all supervisors to get training, irrespective of any perceived need. I certainly support making training available, but again think it is inefficient to impose a blanket requirement. In short, I believe that this aspect of the plan is inconsistent with granting more flexibility for each unit to do what is proven to work and with focusing on key efficiency goals.
Your Input
If you have an opinion about this, please let me know what you think, because I am planning to express an objection to this section.
Finally, I want you to know that I am very positive and optimistic about the promise of this new Human Resources system to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of UW-Madison and the Center, and to help us continue to excel.
