Uncsastaff Council

UNCSASTAFF COUNCIL

Minutes ofNovember 17, 2016

Representatives and alternates present:Laurel Banks, Kay Bosworth, Karyl Caouette,Amanda Buzard, Karyl Caouette, MaryGraves,Nakita Green,Timothy Hester, AngelJackson, Leslie Kamtman, Christa Keen, Sonya Linney,Marissa McCullough, MitsyMcNeil,David Morris, Robin O’Neal,Mary Pennington, Phillip Perry,Joseph Roberts, ChristiaThomason,LaurenWhitaker

Alternates present: Gregory Harris, Jared Johnson, Nita Mixaykham, Casey Powers, Ramona Richmond, Jack Waters

Representatives absent: Steve Gallagher, Krista Johnson, Mandi Lacey, Jamie Moore,Brock Snyder

Visitors:

Jim DeCristo, Sarah Lawrence, Jeremy Serkin, Dianna LeBaube, Sharon Summer, Samuel Holland, Misty Caudle, John Caudle, John Chapman, Crystal Jester, Jessica Rogers, Karen Beres

Quorum: confirmed

ApprovalofMinutes: Minutes of theSeptember 15, 2016 meetingwere approved.

New Employees: Jeremy Serkin (Chancellor’s Office), Dianna LeBaube (Financial Aid,), Sharon Summer (Health Services), Samuel Holland (Housekeeping), Misty Caudle (Housekeeping, Crystal Jester (Advancement), Jessica Rogers (Student Accounts), Krista Smith (Student Affairs), and Sam Holland (Housekeeping)

Chair’sReport(Lauren Whitaker)

Employee Appreciation Day:

Lauren thanked all who participated and helped with Employee Appreciation Day: “I want to thank everyone who helped with Employee Appreciation Day. We had a great, great day! And,if you helped with that event why don’t you just stand up?We had many more people who aren’t representatives to the Staff Council who helped us out. We are planning to do an after action, debriefing, and evaluation meeting. That will probably happen in December. If you have feedback on our ideas or that will improve the day please send them to me or Laurel. And we will take those back to the committee and hopefully we can continue to create a good day that you will feel appreciated and appreciate each other.

Veterans Day

“We also this past week collaborated with the military, affiliated Student Task Force to present several opportunities to honor our vets and to support our vets. He have about 40 total between faculty, staff, and students. He had an Open House up at the Teaching and Learning Center which that’s where Jorje Waybrant works. She is the head of the task force. She had an open house hoping get the student vets to see where they were and see what resources are there for them. She is working to form a veterans/student association, a student organization that will help to support each other. And, we had a film screening on Thursday night thanks to Jack Waters who was involved in making of a documentary film. One of our alumni’s was the filmmaker. He made a film about an artist in Lexington who was a Navy Seal who died in action in Afghanistan. So we showed that and we had the veterans’ parents to meet with the filmmaker. It was a very moving experience for those folks that where there. Thanks to Jack for putting that together. And that on Friday we ended with catered lunch here in Eisenberg for all the vets. It was pretty well attended. It was a pretty good lunch. Thank everyone who helped with that. Hopefully we can continue with the campus to recognize and honor our vets.

“As you know that Veteran’s Day is a state holiday, but for us it is one we moved to the winter break between Christmas and New Year’s so we don’t observe it as a holiday but we do take it later.”

Erskine Bowles Award presentation

“I wish I had a more definitive update on the Erskine Bowles Award presentation. I was not able to confirm with GA down in Chapel Hill but it will be presented, I believe, I have heard that it will be presented at the Board of Governors meeting on December 2 which is the Friday after Thanksgiving so it is coming up really fast. I am trying to confirm that but I can tell you that General Administration have done a story about Joe Rick for their website and I think that will be up anytime now. UNC-TV came and taped some footage with Joe and did interviews and that interview will be present at the Board of Governors.”

She passed around a sign-up sheet for those who were interested in traveling down to Chapel Hill to support Joe Rick and see him get presented with the award.
Holiday Potluck

Thursday, December 15 in the Eisenberg Social Hall from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

She passed around a sign-up sheet for those who were interested in helping with the event.

MYSA and website feedback

Claire Machamer and Elizabeth White were invited to this meeting to talk more about staff council questions and concerns about MYSA and the website. They both had conflicts and were not able to attend. Lauren asked to form a small committee of Staff Council members who would like to have a dialogue with Claire and her team about questions we have on the website and things that might be done to improve our experience on the website.

A sign-up sheet was passed around for members who were interested in serving on the committee.

Staff Assembly

“Matt Brody who is the Vice-President of HR from the UNC system usually comes and talks to the Staff Assembly. He didmentioned about the employee engagement survey. Our campus did this survey recently. He is hoping that all the UNC campuses will participate in the survey to create a benchmark for each campus of where they are and how they can improve. We were the head of the curb on that and I think we were the first campus that did it. I understand the results are back. We don’t have them yet but hopefully we will be getting some communications from the cabinet so about that.”

“By now everybody should have receive all their bonuses and salary increases so I hope you are enjoying that.”

“Another thing they have done in GA which Staff Assembly initiated is that they have created a cross the system scorecard for SHRA salaries…that’s employees who are subject to Human Resources Act comparing salaries on campuses to the market rate for their city. They had it mapped out but they didn’t have the individual campuses populated.”

“Staff Assembly leadership is having regular dialogues with President Spelling in promoting staff concerns and advocating for staff. One of the exercise that we did was to try to come up with two or three items that we thought she could do or should do to improve the quality of life for the staff and a couple i that don’t involve money. Some of the items that we came up with were:

1. Mandatory training for all supervisors which is currently not a practice across the system.

2. Elimination of the classification that is known as SHRA exempt which means employees who are subject to the Human Resource Act are exempt from overtime regulations.

3. Improve and enhance the dialogue and the narrative that is surrounding the staff and the employees in the University system. When they talk about faculty/ excellence they should also mention staff excellence. They just should improve the language when they are talking about staff.”

Ombuds Office

Leslie Kamtman reported that the committee has not yet met but is hoping to meet in December. The committee members are Paul Sharpe, Mike Wakeford (faculty representatives), Lauren Whitaker, Leslie Kamtman (staff representatives), and Karen Beres and Carin Ioannou (administrative representatives). Paul already met with Carin to discuss the logistics of the search for the position so when we meet we can have something more concrete to move forward with.

CommitteeReports

Membership &Elections: Mary Graves reported. District 2 has another vacancy and Nita Mixaykham has agreed to be the alternate but it has to be approved by the district. District 3 and District 6 is still looking for an alternate.

ChiefofStaffUpdates(JimDeCristo)

Strategic Plan Survey update

Jim reported that the Board and Governors of the UNC system is working on the strategic plan. He is seeking for feedback and input through the survey online that has been out for more than a month. It will close on Sunday, Nov. 20. He asked that all staff go online and fill out the survey and provide feedback.They are received 750 responses so far and they would like to have more responses to add to it. A link to the survey can be found on the UNC System website at:

The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. Please rest assured that all responses will remain confidential and will be given careful consideration as the planning process moves forward.

For additional information on the five priorities of the UNC strategic plan, as well as information regarding the overall process, please visit the UNC strategic planning website at

Tuition and Fees update

The tuition and fees committee met on Tuesday. It is an annual process that we go through involving students, faculty, and staff on what increases we made to tuition and fees. The committee been meeting for several weeks now but they finalized this year’s request that will go to the Board of Trustees for approval and then the Board of Governors for approval for increases for the next year and for the next two upcoming year including ‘18-19 school year. A modest 2% increase to undergraduate and college.

State Employees Combined Campaign (SECC) in North Carolina update

Good news about the State Employees Combined Campaign (SECC) in North Carolina.Last year, 31 of UNCSA’s 446 employees donated $3,515 to various charities through the SECC. Our goal this year was to double the number of donors and to raise at least $5,000. This morning the amount was at $4750 and since this morning donation has come through toadd the $250 needed to makeour goal of $5,000. 27 people participated so far but people can still participate to raise more than the$5,000 goal.

The Best Place to Work Survey update

There was a tremendous response from over 300 employees who participated in the survey. Approximately, 75% of employees took out the time to fill out the survey. Waiting on communications to roll out the data and to see how we did in the various categories. That should be coming out shortly which will show us that we have work to do. The Cabinet, Deans, quality workplace committee, and the strategic plan will work together and include Staff/Faculty in the process to improve and move things forward. Improve communication, and work on salaries and benefits

HR updates (James Lucas)

Holiday Schedule

HR Director, James Lucas is in Chapel Hill today meeting with his counterparts, but Lauren was able to meet briefly with him. They talked about the holiday schedule. We are off on Friday, December 23 and we are off Monday, December 26 through Thursday, December 29. December 30, the campus will be closed and everyone would have to take vacation day.

FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act)

There were more than a handful of people that were impacted by the change. If you were impacted by the change you should have been notified. It will be up to the employee and supervisor to figure out how you will manage your time.

Policy review deadline is tomorrow.

HR has been busy switching over to a new platform posting position and hiring called People Admin. This will vastly improve the in-user experience. This training will begin in January.

CommitteeReports

Membership &Elections: Mary Graves reported that we have a new an alternate for District # 3 which is Jared Johnson. She also presented Joseph Roberts with a mug because he is retiring next in December.

CommunityService/Sustainability:Lauren reported on James Moore behalf that Staff Council worked with Residence Life and Student Government to collect some items for Hurricane Relief. There were a pretty good participation in this initiative. Joe Rick has been busy drive the items to Boy Scouts organization.

Lunch and Learn Professional Development: Sarah Lawrence reported on November 2 Ramona Richmond and Melissa Brown presented a workshop on the Art of Couponing for Black Friday and throughout the year. It was from 11:30-12:30 p.m. Looking to reschedule the “Rundown on Labels”in January or February. Steve Gallagher has offered to do a resume workshop and a date has not been established. If you have questions just emailme. Make sure you are reading My SA for these workshops. If you have a questions please feel free to contact Sarah at .

Special Events: Jack Waters passed out a flyer about the Staff Council “After Hours Mixer”to celebrate the holiday season. The event will be held on Dec. 5 at 5:30 p.m. and the location will be at the Corks, Caps on Taps on 626 West Fourth Street in Winston Salem. You can receive $1.00 off all draft beers and wine and 10% off food/snacks. Join Staff Council for some after-hours relaxation

Announcements

Lauren passed around a “Food for Thought” hand out and asked each person present to take a moment as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday and think about what they are grateful for in their jobs and how we can make it better. She asked that each person take a few minutes to fill out the handout and don’t include their name. A few people were willing to share responses from these statements/questions:

“The one thing I am most grateful for in my job is:”

“One thing that doesn’t cost money that the administration could do to improve morale is:”

“What can Staff Council do to improve morale?”

She collected the rest of the handouts to get feedback on where we are as a Staff Council and how we can improve.

Respectfully submitted by,

Sonya Linney