Uncsa Staff Council

UNCSA STAFF COUNCIL

Minutes of February 16, 2017

Representatives and alternates present: Laurel Banks, Kay Bosworth, Karyl Caouette, Mary Graves, Angel Jackson, Leslie Kamtman, Sonya Linney, Marissa McCullough, Mitsy McNeil, Jamie Moore, David Morris, Robin O’Neal, Mary Pennington, Christia Thomason, Lauren Whitaker

Alternates present: Christina Dowell, Nita Mixaykham, Ramona Richmond, Jack Waters

Visitors: Kemora Brownlee, Lisa Lambert, Jordon Jones, Sarah Lawrence, James Lucas, Jim DeCristo

Quorum: confirmed

Approval of Minutes: Minutes of the January 19 meeting were approved.

New Employee:

Chair’s Report (Lauren Whitaker)

Staff Assembly Conference Call Meeting Leslie was able to attend the meeting with staff assembly so she will report on that…..Leslie stated, ”What was mostly discussed there was Matt Brody, Vice President for Human Resources and team are working on a SHRA employee’s compensation scorecard throughout the system. Once they finalize this they will submit to all the campuses and that can be use by each campus as a frame of reference to determine if each campus is doing the best they can do in terms of compensation. Matt said even if money isn’t available at least we can have the conversation. He also mentioned that they are working on governor level discussion for resources to adjust salaries to bring folks on the lower end up to market rate, particular the people who are completely state funded. When the score card comes available they will have a chart of compensation levels. The score card will evaluate the distance of each employee salary from the established market rate based on the band-class of compensation level. This will be tool kit for each campus to help them to decide how they can help raise salaries up to a reasonable level. There are difference between the campuses because some campuses actually have supplemental funds in order to help raise salaries. Other institutions just rely on state funds. In this report they will also indicate the factors that affect employee’s salaries. Sometimes it is the geography or region where you lived. If they are highly specialized or demands of higher occupation or area; such as hospital or private sectors would raise the competition level. This will result in a higher salary level. There will be a chart and lengthy explanation of the scorecard data findings. The score card should be available sometime in March or April.”

James DeCristo added more to the discussion about the SHRA employee’s compensation scorecard. He said, “We do look at this same kind of thing on our on campus. We look at the salary amongst employees on campus and where people are against market rate. A big factor that also effects that is the years of services. Entry-level people who are new coming in don’t necessary start at market rate salary. But the bigger problem we have is the fact that we haven’t had consistent raises over past year and as people get more years of service they don’t get closer to market rate. So we have this depression that exist across campus and we do look at it every year. We have very little resources to apply, especially in the years we get absolute no money for increases, but only bonus money for increases to apply. I can tell you that in the last two years by doing our own analysis that we have put a little extra money into those salaries of the lowest level positions on campus to try to make slow progress to help those people out. But when we look at the number of people and the amount that we have it is certainly not a dramatic change in anyway and it could easily get lost in the bigger scope of other things. But we have tried each year to do that and the last two years and hope we can do that this year. It’s much easier when we have new funds that come available. It’s an ongoing continual struggle. Legislature decides on both SHRA and EHRA salaries.”

All School Staff Meeting Lauren W. announced that the next meeting will be the All School Staff Meeting on March 16. Chancellor Bierman will be there to address staff and discuss plans for the old library. If anybody have other topics to address email them to Lauren. Game and Craft Night Jim DeCristo and Lauren W. were the only ones in attendance at the Game and Craft Night. It was worth trying and we might try again at a later date.

Staff Awards Lauren said, “It is that time of the year when we start taking about our staff awards and we’re targeting to get a call for submissions out at the beginning of March. Hopefully, we will have the month of March for people to submit nominations. We will be looking for people to serve on the committee to decide who gets the awards. We will have members from the membership and elections committee and I am going to ask last year’s recipients to serve on the committee. If you are interested in serving on the committee let me know. We are going to use electronic submission the year and Sarah L. will help us out with the Qualtrics form and we will have paper forms for those you don’t have ready access to electronics.

Staff Council Elections We are working on elections for old number of districts so we will be doing that during the course of February and March to determine representatives. And officer’s elections will occur in May.

Chief of Staff Updates Jim DeCristo reported on the Employee Satisfaction Survey. Jim said, “Hopefully you all received the January communications from Lindsay and some of the data from the survey. We had 74% of the people responded to the survey which is really an amazing survey response and gives really good creditability to the data we received. Now the real work begins and there is plenty of work to do based on the results. There is all cross the board and institutional level. We have to work on more communication; better communications; more transparency; more visibility from the senior leadership team; more opportunities for you to interact with the senior leadership and other parts of leadership on campus. Obviously wages came up in the discussion and some dissatisfaction around that. The Quality Workplace Committee has a strategic planning group that has been assigned the responsibility to work on taking the responses from the report and to use those to help our strategic planning initiative to improving the workplace culture. That group which consist of all parts of the campus including SHRA and EHRA employees. Leslie Kamtman is a part of that committee and they are working to roll out some initial programs to try to respond to the data that is in the report. We want to focus on big institutional things that came out. That’s the approach we took and you will hear more about it in the April timeframe. We will roll out some initiatives. Some things started already is that Lindsay started his monthly newsletter. The next newsletter could be driven by an idea that you may have. If you have ideas on the newsletter input you can send to me or Leslie…whatever works for you and it will be part of the conservation at the committee level. And remember changing culture is a long-term process.”

HR Updates (James Lucas) People Admin James said, “We have listed the training window for the new PeopleAdmin. We are asking all Executive Assistants and Business Officers who route forms for Recruitment to attend one of these training sessions. It is mandatory that at least one representative from each department attend training; however, we encourage at least two members from your department attend a training session. If you have a position that needs to be posted prior to the training sessions, Human Resources will do live integrated training with that department to ensure the proper training and posting of the position.”

Performance Management “Performance evaluations for SHRA and EHRA employees are due to Human Resources no later than March 31, 2017. SHRA evaluations will be completed using the new Performance Management document and Probationary employee evaluations will be completed using the Off-Cycle portion of the new Performance Management document Human Resources provided training on in the fall. If you have any questions or concerns completing this document, Human Resources is available for refresher training. This document should be submitted electronically to Kemora Brown or myself.” Also, the Performance Management cycle for EHRA NT employees began April 1, 2016, and ends March 31, 2017. The annual performance management evaluation must be conducted with each permanent EPA NT employees. This document will use a standard memo format and should be submitted electronically.”

Data mark Site There is a new data mark site on UNC System State employees’ salaries that will roll out soon. No one haven’t seen the site yet, but it is still basically the same information from the Charlotte Observer website. Adverse Weather Policy A new adverse weather policy will roll out soon. It’s probably going to eliminate option 3. We will still have Option 1 & 2 but the good news is the authority to close the campus will be put back into the Chancellor hands. The likely of an employee force to use leave time will go out the window. It is not official but more information will be available soon.

Committee Reports M embersh i p & El ecti o ns: Mary Graves reported that we have three new officer: Natascha Romeo (district # 3 alternate) Felix Bello (district # 11 representative), and Celisa Pittman (district # 10 alternate).

C ommu ni ty S er v i ce/ S us t a i n a b ili t y: Jamie Moore reported that Saturday, April 1 is the Great America Clean Up and it should be a good educational opportunity. Lunch and Learn P r o f ess i o n al D e v e l o p m e n t: Sarah reported that Lunch and Learn: Mindfulness/Meditation workshop will be offered on Tuesday, March 14, from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. in Library, 4th Floor Seminar Room. All workshops will be posted on MySA and you will be able to sign up for the workshop online.

Special Events: Jack reported that he is working on several staff and family social event. One will be to attend WS Thunderbirds Hickory Team on March 17 or 18 and Winston Salem Baseball Dash game in April. He will work on getting a group of 20 discounted rate for $15. Executive Committee: Lauren Whitaker reported on the Executive Committee efforts to revise bylaws. LW discussed some changes to the revise bylaws. Christa T. asked about the election procedures.

Adjourned at 12:10pm Respectfully submitted by, Sonya Linney