key operational plans
Human Resource Support and Development Plan
2007 Updates
A campuswide advisory team of 13 faculty and staff members was developed and charged to act in consultation with the Provost and Vice Chancellor’s Office, the Equity and Affirmative Action Office and the Human Resource Office to oversee the development and implementation of the goals in the Human Resources Support and Development Plan.
Accomplishments
- Implementing Healthy Titans 2010, an integrated employee wellness program;
- Conducting a literature review of human resources metrics in university settings and best practices and benchmarks;
- Conducting interviews with other human resources professionals nationally who have implemented strategic plans, including metrics used, etc.;
- Developing an action plan to decrease spending due to workers’ compensation claims; and
- Moving forward 11 high-priority goals for implementation in the next three to five years.
Priorities
These high-priority goals include the following issues that need to be addressed in the Human Resources Support and Development Key Operational Plan in the next one to three years:
- We need to develop a campuswide staffing plan to address the large number of faculty and staff who will be retiring in the next three to 10 years (approximately 47 percent of faculty, 37 percent of professional academic staff and 52 percent of classified staff are 50 years of age or older; over the past 10 years, retention rate is 57 percent for faculty, 52 percent for professional academic staff and 53 percent for classified staff).
- As a University, we need to address our “faculty-to-instructional- academic staff” ratio and our “student-to-faculty” ratio.
- The recruitment processes for classified and unclassified employees need to become more transparent, efficient and effective.
- Orientation for new faculty and staff to the campus and department/units needs to become more comprehensive.
- Faculty and staff continue to have professional growth needs and wants.
- Exit interviews show younger employees value development experiences that lead to career progression.
- We need to increase the diversity of our faculty and staff.
Executive Summary September 2006
The Human Resource Support and Development Plan is a document that provides an overview of current human resources support and development services at UW Oshkosh, linking the Affirmative Action Plan and the Diversity Plan 2008. The plan outlines human resource support and development planning assumptions over the next five years, anticipates challenges that the university will face in managing its workforce, and states goals to address those challenges.
The Human Resource Office, working closely with the Office of the Provost, is the unit responsible for providing the leadership to develop and refine this key operational plan to promote the increased professionalism, refinement and support of our four employee groups—faculty, academic staff, classified staff and students.
The Human Resources Office supports the Offices of the Deans, Chairs, Vice
Chancellors, Associate/Assistant Vice Chancellors, and Directors across the
campus by providing the following major groupings of services: (1)
coordination of fringe benefits, immigration and international taxes; payroll
and leave accounting, workers compensation, unemployment compensation, family
and medical leave, and student employment for all employee groups; (2) manage
recruitment, reclassification for classified staff, performance evaluation
and merit processes, labor relations, complaints and grievances of classified
staff; (3) provide assistance with recruitment, salary equity and re-titling
for academic staff, complaints and grievances of faculty and academic staff.
In supporting these same campus offices, the Office of the Provost has typically
provided the following major groupings of services: (1) relationship
management between administration, faculty and instructional academic staff;
(2) manage recruitment, selection, renewal, promotion, tenure and merit for
faculty and instructional academic staff; (3) provide orientation of new
faculty and instructional academic staff; (4) manage development programs
for faculty and academic staff.
The Equity & Affirmative Action Office supports these same campus offices, along with the entire campus community by providing the following major groupings of services: (1) leadership on equity and affirmative action; (2) education and training on issues related to equity and affirmative action including involvement in the recruitment and hiring processes; (3) develop, implement, monitor and evaluate equity and affirmative action policies and procedures; (4) serve as the contact for faculty, staff and students on complaints/grievances related to equity and affirmative action, and as the employee ombudsman. At this time the HR Director is also the Director of Equity & Affirmative Action, with an Assistant Director of Equity & Affirmative Action reporting to the director.
The Offices have historically taken a reactive approach to human resources management, focusing primarily on the administration of services. For the Human Resources and Provost’s Offices to be valued by UW Oshkosh and its employees, they must provide efficient administration of the personnel function but, equally important, they must become a partner in enhancing strategy execution, generating commitment and productivity from employees, creating solutions to human resource problems preventing the campus from achieving its full potential, and nurturing the organization’s capacity for change.
To achieve this vision, the units must become collaborative partners in delivering human resource services and meeting the needs of a diverse campus community. They must adopt an internal consultant role and provide leadership support for practices and standards which motivate employees and result in effective use of human, financial, technical and physical resources. The units must place a high value on professionalism, collegiality, and cooperation while recognizing the importance of individual contributions. Finally, they must be proactive in furthering a campus culture that embraces diversity as a means to ensuring excellence in the delivery of education.
In considering this key operational plan, the following strategic planning assumptions were made:
- High-school graduate pool (statewide and in 6 primary feeder counties) indicates an increasing population of graduates initially with a decline projected in the years from 2009 to 2010;
- Retirements may occur in the staffing of the human resources function but the number of staff will remain constant;
- Retirements will increase across all jobs resulting in a loss of institutional knowledge and expertise (e.g., One half of classified staff will retire in the next 5-10 years);
- Greater emphasis will need to be placed on recruiting and retaining qualified employees of color;
- Continued competition with other UW institutions that plan to grow their enrollment will also mean greater competition for labor recruited from this area;
- UW-System graduate schools will continue to lose market share to Wisconsin private 4-year universities and colleges;
- Direct instructional resources are constant (protected) over the 2005-2007 biennium while support to non-instructional services will decline;
- The average age of the workforce will increase, bringing new issues of concern to employees and employers;
- A demand for higher education among the workforce will continue to grow;
- Development and delivery of high demand programs will increasingly need to be self-supportive;
- The composition of faculty compared with instructional staff will continue to change with the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty increasing;
- Performance management will become a key driver of performance among classified and academic staff supervisors, impacting employee performance and development issues;
- Due to budget issues, staffing or resource reductions will occur in many key areas (both academic departments and administrative offices);
- Shrinkage of employee Fringe Benefits may occur due to budget issues;
- UW Oshkosh will be required to implement processes for conducting criminal background checks for all new recruitments and for specific continuing employees.
The plan identifies 10 goals for Human Resource Support and Development. These goals must be pursued with a strong emphasis on collaboration between the Human Resources Office, the Office of the Provost, and the Equity & Affirmative Action Office to avoid duplication of services, improve efficiency of service delivery, and ensure information-sharing about policies, procedures, and individual cases.
The first goal to be pursued is the completion of a program review of current human resource and support development services provided by the Office of the Provost and the Human Resources Office. This review needs to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses in the core functional areas of human resources: planning, recruitment, selection, orientation and socialization, training and development, performance, compensation, benefits, employee relations, discipline, safety and health. Data gathered from this review will then be used to revise and prioritize plan goals and action steps.
The second goal is to develop a strong, proactive performance support program for all employees of the university. This will involve improving skills of supervisors, department chairs, and administrators in both accurately measuring and documenting performance and in problem-solving to enhance performance and ensure employees are able to reach their full potential in a given job. A key focus here must be on ensuring individuals are familiar with and understand performance expectations and that standards for promotion and renewal are clearly articulated and consistently applied. Similarly, expectations for merit, rewards, incentives, and compensation need to be clear and consistent. A performance support program must include a performance appraisal process and training for both employees and supervisors, career development for employees of the university and careful selection of metrics used to evaluate unit and organizational level outcomes.
The third goal identified in this plan is the development of a university-wide recruitment and staffing program. This program needs to continue the work we have already accomplished in training search and screen committees, supervisors, and other individuals involved in recruitment of a diverse applicant pool and the application of equal employment opportunity in the selection process. The plan also needs to consider policy with respect to the importance placed upon internal versus external recruitment. As with other areas, metrics need to be developed to evaluate unit and organizational outcomes.
The fourth goal is to develop and implement a strong career development and leadership succession program. Initially, identification of career paths, to the extent that they exist, must occur. Evaluation of those career paths will need to consider whether they are meeting the needs of employees and are available in an equitable manner. Assessment of leadership potential and opportunities for leadership development must be provided throughout the campus with a clear link back to leadership succession. Employees who take the opportunity to develop their leadership skills need to be reassured that they will find a place to utilize those skills within the University.
The fifth goal is to develop an organization satisfaction survey that can be used to track over time the opinions of university employees on the various components of their work life: pay, job opportunities, supervision, co-workers, benefits, type of work, safety and security, and work/life balance.
A sixth goal is to improve new employee orientation and socialization into the University community. In particular, we identify a need for socialization that reinforces the mission, vision, and values of the larger university community. Individual departments and units must take on a larger role by training people to mentor new faculty and staff, create proactive versus reactive processes and create proactive rather than reactive approaches to training and socialization of new employees.
The seventh goal is to work with the academic colleges to improve renewal and promotion processes. This includes ensuring individuals are familiar with and understand performance expectations, that we continue to ensure equity in promotion and renewal for faculty and instructional staff, that we develop a policy/practice statement for promotion from within and leadership transition that allows the university to capitalize on the development of internal leadership talent. We also will include goals in the current Affirmative Action Plan.
An eighth goal is to offer leadership development training for individuals currently in leadership positions or seeking to enter leadership positions.
The ninth goal focuses on the development of an employee wellness program that can be linked to the cost of benefits and workers compensation claims. Included in this evaluation is a review of campus policies relating to health and wellness, work-life balance and employee assistance. New policies need to be considered to address issues that are of key importance to a more diverse, aging workforce and attention. Finally, across campus employees need to be made more aware of these challenges and the services/policies provided by the university to address them.
Finally, the tenth goal is to increase the diversity of faculty, academic and classified staff. This goal is integrated with the Diversity Plan 2008 and Affirmative Action Plan goals. Initially this goal will focus on increasing the diversity of faculty and classified staff. A plan will be developed to increase the diversity of faculty over the long term to include developing relationships with appropriate Ph.D. granting institutions and by a “grow our own” program. In order to increase the diversity of classified staff we will need to obtain staffing delegation from OSER and UW-System, and develop programs to increase the diversity of applicants on the registers through relationship-building with community organizations.