Approved 01-05-23

ASEC Minutes

2:00 – 4:15 p.m. Thursday, December 8, 2022

53 Bascom Hall

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/93936751067

Members Present: Donna Cole; Alissa Ewer; Julie Hunt Johnson; Stephanie Jones; Albert Muniz; Mallory Musolf, chair; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Karen Massetti-Moran, Beth Meyerand, Kelly Rupp, Patrick Sheehan

The meeting was called to order at 2:02 p.m.

The minutes of December 1 were approved.

General Reports

Mallory Musolf, ASEC Chair, reported on discussions she, Donna, and Jake had with Travis Blomburg in the Office of Sustainability, following up on discussions with Missy Nergard and Alex Frank at a previous ASEC meeting. Travis will be invited to a future ASEC meeting to talk more about the campus’ ZeroWaste efforts.

Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that two finalists will be invited back to campus for the Chief Human Resources Officer search. Campus PCR tests for employees will end on December 23. Rapid tests and masks will continue to be made available as long as there are supplies. Interim Chief Human Resources Officer Patrick Sheehan will be meeting with members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic and University Staff Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to discuss the committee’s recommendations and the efforts already underway to address them. Jake reported that Jenny Faust will be leaving her position as the Director of the Office of Strategic Consulting at the end of December. Charles Meyer will be serving as the interim director.

Liaison Reports

Donna Cole reported on the SMPH CASI’s current election, which was launched on December 7 with a robust slate. She also reported on the UW System Reps meeting. The Reps did not receive a response to their letter to President Rothman expressing concerns about progression guidelines for the System campuses. The Reps discussed the letter with Regent Walsh and Regent Bogost as well. The Reps also discussed the prospect of tuition reimbursement for university employees.

Guests: Patrick Sheehan, Interim Chief Human Resources Officer; and Karen Massetti-Moran, Director of Total Rewards, Office of Human Resources

Karen provided an update on the CHRO search. There is no timeline on when a decision will be made. Two finalists will be invited back to campus to engage further with executive leadership and the HR community.

OHR is working on finalizing a document summarizing TTC appeals. There were roughly 16,000 employees assigned new titles, with 11,398 academic staff. Of those, 564 filed some form of appeal in the system. There were 378 appeals resolved via informal resolution. There were 24 that went to OHR, and of those 12 ended at the governance/HR panel. Five appeals went to Patrick for his final approval or denial. As OHR continues to resolve 24 outstanding issues with job titles, new standard job descriptions and appeals follow this same process at this point. We want to think about a new, more permanent appeal process going forward.

Feedback on progression from both ASEC and CEBC has been helpful. OHR needs to produce a document for the HR community on progression within range as well as one for general consumption, as well as the Compensation Center of Excellence (CCOE), which provides internal guidance for OHR’s compensation team. There will also be something more outward-facing with resources to understand the processes both of the CCOE and progression more broadly. Schools/colleges/divisions are partnering with OHR to implement salary review strategies. OHR is aiming for a January timeline for finalizing documents on progression and is planning for communications on them as well. ASEC discussed both the need to have clarity on how individuals can move up through the quartiles from the first and second, and the need for those in higher quartiles to still be able to move up through performance increases—particularly those on soft money. This area is where training for HR reps is needed in order to understand individual needs, performance, duration in role, and other areas.

Initial results of the latest compensation exercise were presented. As of November 30, academic staff received 53.2% of the base-building adjustments that were distributed in the last exercise. These adjustments totaled almost $19 million. More than half of those base-building adjustments were given due to performance, though there were parity and retention adjustments as well. As compared to November 2021, when TTC was implemented, the campus has made overall significant improvement in raising salaries for individuals below minima or in the first quartile.

Guest: Beth Meyerand, Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Affairs

Vice Provost Meyerand reported that the final report on the Staff Climate Survey results will be published online, and there will be a dashboard as well. The dashboard will require NetID access. The dashboard enables one to look at the data and filter by several criteria, including employment category, school/college/division, and even department in some cases. For those departments with responses numbering less than 10, results won’t be visible to ensure anonymity. Academic Planning and Institutional Research built the dashboard, and the hope is to use it to highlight areas that need to be addressed. The survey had a 38.3% response rate, and the response was representative.

The HIB working group has met twice so far. The group has done a deep dive on the HIB website and how the informal resolution process was laid out. The group discussed improvements to the website, as well as the fact that there needs to be greater visibility to resources to deal with difficult behavior more generally. The group is looking at the notion of making HIB a subsection of a larger website on addressing difficult behavior and creating additional resources, such as a process flow to help people know where to go when.

On the topic of mental health for staff, Vice Provost Meyerand asked ASEC to direct any academic staff to her office if there were any unaddressed needs. ASEC discussed how it seems that there are more global and less individual initiatives available for students, and ASEC asked about what broader kinds of programs might be possible for staff as well.

Motion to Convene in Closed Session Pursuant to Wis. Stats. 19.85(1)(c), and (f) to Discuss the Nominating Committee Slate (Cole). Seconded. Approved.

Motion to Reconvene in Open Session (Cole). Seconded. Approved.

Business

• December Assembly Meeting Prep

Albert will move approval of the ASPP Ch. 2 change.

• ASEC Planning Subcommittee Reports

For the transportation group, Donna reported that Vice Chancellor Cramer connected with Margaret Tennessen to discuss parking concerns with the subcommittee. That meeting is scheduled for December 19. The DEI group will be meeting on December 19 to map resources and activities, as well as to discuss the ad hoc committee’s recommendations. The group plans to invite members of the ad hoc committee to a second meeting in late January. The CASI group discussed formal communication from the Provost Office and want to offer a first draft; this will be discussed at the next ASEC meeting. The group is also developing a best practices document for CASIs with 5 different areas (running a CASI; engagement with stakeholders; engagement with deans/unit leaders; events; catch-all), and the group will put this out to the CASIs across campus to help craft it once the draft is completed.

• Topics for Guests

Provost: carryover topics from last meeting, update on student free speech survey, further thoughts on staff climate survey results

VPFSA: further discussion of staff climate survey results, update on HIB working group

Meeting adjourned at 4:01 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff