Chancellor and Staff Assembly Discuss Issues and Opportunities

Reflecting a very clear optimistic look at the current situation, Chancellor Katehi shared her views and sought ideas during a meeting with Staff Assembly’s Executive Committee. The meeting, attended by Provost Enrique Lavernia, Associate Vice Chancellor Karen Hull, and Associate Chancellor Maril Stratton, was an early opportunity for staff to provide many ideas to improve the university and help all staff members.

Following a brief introduction of Staff Assembly’s mission and accomplishments as well as an introduction of each of its Executive Committee, the Chancellor impressed upon everyone her view of the future that looks upon best practices, using more technology and tools to help staff do their jobs, and looking at a shared services model that looks at ways for the entire university to share expertise.

Breaking the Cycle

In the past, the cycle of funding created a cycle of layoffs, followed by hiring additional staff, followed by layoffs.  In such a scenario, the staff suffer, as the investment that could have gone into training, tools, and better processes may instead go to additional staff.  While this may help in offsetting the workload, the benefit is short term due to the funding cycles.  To break the cycle, the Chancellor is asking all members of the UC Davis community to think creatively and assist the university to focus on efforts towards having more tools, better processes and better trained staff.  Ultimately, this represents a true long-term investment in staff that would, in turn, have a long- term benefit in supporting faculty and students.  By investing in staff, Katehi believes we can develop excellence in staff.

The Executive Committee responded by providing a variety of ideas that focused initially on tools to help staff do their jobs.  These focused on an online purchase request system to eliminate department paper-based approaches, leveraging the tools developed by Letters and Sciences to enter electronic timesheets, and leveraging the faculty recruitment system developed in Plant Sciences.  In each case, excellent systems were developed that, for a variety of reasons, only serve a small segment of the campus.  For these and other suggestions, the Chancellor jotted down ideas and asked the Provost to work with appropriate campus units to investigate as well as look into how other UC campuses use or don’t use such tools.

Sharing Resources

The Chancellor recognized that there are likely numerous staff members who are experts in a particular area.  Previously, that expertise has been known or available only to a limited number of departments.  When other departments need the same expertise, they would have submitted a vacancy and hired.  However, the need may not be completely full time and is not needed for a long period of time.  Would it be better to share expert staff to help other departments and, in-turn, provide an opportunity for those staff to broaden their experience?

Staff and their talents have, in various cases, been hidden away in the department structures.  This is a way to allow staff to impact a larger university community and showcase their talents.  Staff Assembly recognizes that such a process could also lead to greater interdepartmental cooperation and, invariably, greater opportunities for staff.

Getting Ideas Through Committees

A significant challenge that Staff Assembly raised are the issues of getting very good ideas through various committees to be implemented.  Many ideas that may help the university may never be implemented due to significant committee reviews.  The Chancellor responded by indicating there may be a process that can identify some very good ideas for quick review and possible implementation.

Workload and Communicating Reductions

With budget cuts and furloughs, Staff Assembly brought up the need to communicate that staff could not continue to do the same amount of work.  Communicating what budget cuts and furloughs mean to faculty, students, and staff, and to adjust expectations for services is very important.  The Chancellor responded by considering having a single website in which departments can add information on service changes and anyone can see what the service change means for them.  This could be reflected as a reduction in open hours, longer turnaround time, or even an elimination of the service.

What Can Staff and Staff Assembly Do

A major component of the Chancellor’s message is a new UC Davis emerging from these difficult times.  She suggested that we can use this time to get ideas implemented and change how things are done.  We can be active participants by submitting ideas.  Staff Assembly is tasked with identifying ways of improving how such ideas can flow through its committees and work with the Administration so it can gather ideas from all levels of the campus community.

Staff Assembly was encouraged by this discussion and the recognition that staff can be active participants in the future.  While we recognize the financial realities, we also recognize that these tough times provide opportunities to improve processes and develop tools that will ultimately allow staff to be more effective.  Staff Assembly encourages everyone to look around and identify not only where things don’t work or can be done better, but also where things do work and how that can be shared with others.