D EVELOPING OHR C APABILITIES - The Importance of Designing a Human Resources System For Your

Strategic Plan Components

1. Conduct an OHR organizational assessment.

2. Create a human resources dashboard.

3. Enhance HR communications for employees and managers.

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The Office of Human Resources (OHR) is currently organized around current employee categories and governance structures. Two of the key units in OHR are Classified Human Resources (CHR) and the Academic Personnel Office (APO). These two offices frequently collaborate, and both offices employ HR generalists and specialists who support the HR representatives in the divisions and departments.

Historically, OHR has primarily focused on providing targeted consultation to support division HR staff, monitoring compliance with personnel policies and serving as liaison to the Office of State Employment Relations and UW System Administration. The HR representatives in the divisions and departments provide unit-specific service and expertise to faculty, staff and hiring managers.

OHR frequently brings the HR representatives together to share practices and address common issues.

This distributed HR model of UW–Madison is common in major research institutions. It allows HR services to be tailored to the individual needs of each campus unit. Based on policy, local units develop their own approaches to workplace issues such as scheduling, workplace flexibility, market

compensation analysis, and even processes such as administering the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The HR Design project recommendations, taken together, suggest a proactive, data-informed approach to serving employees and employers on campus.

Delivering on this approach will likely require changing the way UW–Madison HR is organized and operates.

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1. C

^{ONDUCT AN}

OHR

ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT

The scope and breadth of the work teams’ recommendations suggest a greater emphasis on OHR’s role in hiring and developing talent, providing expert consultation, and managing data and systems to support more sophisticated HR processes and enhanced services. To that end, OHR will conduct an internal organizational assessment to answer questions such as:

 What approach is best to deliver HR services (e.g., generalists serving specific divisions or functions, or specialists in specific HR areas)?

 What centrally provided HR services and expertise should be improved and enhanced?

 Should CHR and APO continue to be separate offices?

 Does OHR have the right staffing and expertise to provide the support that the campus will need in the new HR system?

 Do the divisions have the knowledge and expertise they need to manage their part of the new system?

 What is the optimal balance between centralized and decentralized HR services?

One area in which OHR will need to add expertise is compensation. UW–

Madison does not currently have central compensation expertise. Our new compensation approach will require data collection and analysis to keep our salary structures current. OHR must evaluate whether it can meet this need by reallocating resources internally or by hiring staff. This plan also calls for OHR to provide more training and support to the campus. These needs will need to be clearly defined and prioritized as we conduct the OHR organizational assessment.

2. C

REATE A HUMAN RESOURCES DASHBOARD

As the work teams developed their recommendations, they frequently called attention to the need for more data to fully understand current and future workforce issues. Data related to human resources is currently organized in multiple systems and repositories. While HRS now provides information about employee compensation and benefits, as well as some information on

employee demographics, this information is not regularly synthesized in a way that will identify trends and support decision-making.

The teams identified data gaps such as:

 Retention and advancement (e.g., employee turnover, who is leaving and why, length of time for promotion, internal movement)

 Recruitment process measures (e.g., applicant quality, cost per hire, size and diversity of applicant pools, yield of different recruitment sources, performance of new hires)

 Compensation levels in relation to external markets

 Employee training and development (effectiveness, costs and return on investment)

 Retirement eligibility and projections for non-faculty

 Workforce skill and competency levels

 Performance management (e.g., performance evaluation completion rates, performance levels)

 Utilization of, and satisfaction with, benefits programs

Using these gaps as a basis for action, OHR will develop a dashboard of key measures to help track the effectiveness of university HR practices. These metrics will be used to identify areas in which policies and processes may need to be adjusted to improve effectiveness and achieve the vision of the HR design—and the vision of UW–Madison. We will work with governance groups and other stakeholders to develop the metrics to be used in addressing these gaps.

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NHANCE

HR

COMMUNICATIONS FOR EMPLOYEES AND MANAGERS Given the complexity of the current university personnel system, including multiple layers of authority (unit, campus, governance, UW System, state government), it is challenging to provide relevant, complete and transparent information to job candidates, employees and even the HR professionals who rely on this information to make decisions. The current OHR website has evolved over time, but is not easy to navigate.

Several of the work teams highlighted the importance of transparency and effective communication on all aspects of the HR system. For example, clear information and communication on benefits is critical to reducing confusion and enabling employees to make the most of the university’s benefit programs.

Other areas that the work teams specifically identified include:

 Workplace flexibility policies and options

 Performance management processes and best practices

 Compensation policies, including market definition and salary structures

 Employee development policies and opportunities

As OHR enhances its communication efforts, we recognize that information should be readily accessible and understandable to all members of the university community, including those with limited English proficiency, limited access to computers/internet and accessibility issues due to disabilities.

In document The Importance of Designing a Human Resources System For Your University (Page 59-62)