Site Team Report

9. Professional and Unionized Staff

The Office of Human Resources has a small staff of 12 people which includes the payroll function. The Office is effectively upgrading the professional characteristics of the staff in order to make human resources a more active participant in the resolution of campus issues. The three most important human resources objectives are: improvement in the professional orientation of the support staff, enhanced reputation of human resources on the campus, and human resources participation in the resolution of academic issues on campus.

The union relationship is working and issues of pay equity, resolutions of grievances and training of employees are being addressed by the human resource and the union leadership. The decertification of the technical union related directly to lack of flexibility afforded these employees in negotiating merit pay differentials.

Grievances are low in number and primarily resolved at the department level with the intervention of human resources. The union president did point to the need for more supervisory training. The custodial wage scale is an issue since they are the highest paid in the state. The administration now has sufficient information to allow them to bargain effectively to control this.

The only increases in employment in the administrative areas have been in the Information Technology area and in graduate programs. Information technology positions are experiencing turnover across all the entire campus, and the human resources group will need to assist in developing alternative programs to attract and retain employees.

The professional and unionized staff recognizes their valuable role in the University. The issues of attracting and retaining good employees require the University look at all avenues to overcome issues of spouse hiring and diversity. The methods to accomplish its action plan, however, are not very clearly thought out, and lack time frames, benchmarks and action steps. The current action steps are very broadly defined and almost any action taken over the next ten years could be determined as having achieved the goal, even though their would be no specific identifiable accomplishment. As the University continues to try to maintain a low level of administration it needs to start setting performance levels and standards in administration. Customer surveys and bench marking are two methods that will help set staffing levels and performance standards.

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