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Director's NoteJohn Roberts |
Hank discussed the New Human Resources Strategic plan in last month's Director's note. Since that time we have been collecting suggestions and concerns from SSEC staff. Associate Dean of the Graduate School, Steve Ackerman, sent a request for input to the Graduate School Center Director in the Physical Sciences and we responded with the document below.
The development of a new Human Resources System continues with hopefully a lot more give and take before it becomes official, and then hopefully a continuing process of evolving and improving it to better meet the needs of the campus community. So please continue to stay involved and continue to let us know your thoughts and ideas.
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Date: October 30, 2012
To: Steven Ackerman, Associate Dean, Physical Sciences, Graduate School
From: Hank Revercomb, Director, Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC)
RE: Human Resource (HR) Design Strategic Plan Inputs
The HR Design project is an extraordinary opportunity for UW-Madison to establish an HR system that is better suited to our specific activities than the current system developed by the State many years ago. The primary 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 25 years). We just need to find ways to handle the slowly decreasing percentage of State support. In reviewing the Strategic plan, there are several significant areas of concern that contradict this premise.
One major concern is that this effort appears to be leading towards a universal “management by control” philosophy instead of allowing units to adopt their own practices. A major strength of the UW-Madison’s research enterprise is the decentralized structure we presently enjoy. The first draft document of the HR Redesign starts out using all of the right words, especially emphasizing “flexibility”; (as we know a one size fits all model is doomed to failure.) Then, however, it begins to detail the new system and adds words like “mandatory” and adds requirements including a lengthy minimum process that mandates an annual performance management processes “that must include: a goal setting exercise, a mid-year check in with each employee, a year-end-written evaluation to assess employee progress against agreed-upon goals and identifies development needs and opportunities.” The plan goes on to express a desire to tie these reviews to merit and implement mandatory training for all supervisors, neglecting to give any information regarding how these processes were defined or examples of why they were effective. While we understand the complexities inherent in combining the Classified and Academic staff processes into one set of rules, this is a major shift from our present culture, rules, and processes and will result in less, not more flexibility in managing the research enterprise. Given this tremendous shift being proposed to implement these recommendations, further studies should be conducted to ensure that these processes are a path to success and allow departments’ true flexibility to adopt their own management style. An alternative philosophy for example, is Total Quality Management (TQM) and W. Edwards Deming’s principles that the campus Administrative Process Redesign (APR) project has been teaching, applying, and endorsing for years. These principles emphasize teamwork, quality, process improvement, and customer service that are fostered by coaching and mentoring employees. According to Deming, "In practice, annual ratings are a disease, annihilating long-term planning, demolishing teamwork, nourishing rivalry and politics...."
Another major concern is the plan does not discuss the removal of salary maximums. The titling and compensation analysis is not expected to be complete by July 1, 2013, however performance management and merit are expected to start then. Salary maximums cause harm to our top performers, which is counterintuitive to the rest of the plan embracing a performance based HR structure. Removing salary maximums would be a quick win by eliminating a barricade for Category A Academic Staff and Classified staff and embracing excellence.
Lastly, the plan is absent of specified goals/metrics by which we can evaluate the new HR system and make periodic improvements to eliminate any problems identified. The intent of the document appears to be a vision for the future, yet there are enough details in the plan at this point that could point to some significant goals. For example, a goal could be to meet a level of 75% employee satisfaction regarding performance management activities. In lieu of lengthy universal minimum performance management measures, departments would need to conduct periodic climate surveys to obtain this information. Department specific policy adjustments and training could then be applied as needed to meet this measure.
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.
This opportunity to update our HR processes comes once in a lifetime. We need to take this opportunity to carefully identify issues that are hurting our ability to sustain excellence and engage fixes that increase the flexibility of major elements to handle challenges. While I certainly support merit exercises and making training and reviews available, I strongly disagree with the inflexible mandates being considered.
