Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
12:15 - 2 pm
105 Stimpson Hall
MINUTES

I. Call to Order

T. Grove called the meeting to order at 12:18 p.m.

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

There was one late addition to the minutes. T. Grove added the appointment of members to the Trustee Nominating Committee to the “New Business” portion of the meeting.

III. Approval of Minutes from last meeting

B. Schaffner made a motion to approve the minutes. M. Kitchen seconded the motion. The EA members voted to approve the minutes from November 14, 2011.

IV. Business of the Day

a) Trustee nominating committee:

T. Grove said there are three people that have volunteered to serve on this important committee this year - Michael Esposito, Leslie Morris, and Andy Page. T. Grove asked if there were any objections, there were none. All three people were appointed to the committee.

b) “EA Survey Says” — Yasamin Miller

L. Morris introduced Yasamin Miller. Y. Miller said she wanted to discuss the EA survey and how best to reach the EA’s survey goals. She suggested this survey could be used as a baseline and in three years, do it again. She said they are encouraged to help the EA develop and administer it sometime around early February. She emphasized the biggest thing was to go beyond perception and on to how the EA can serve staff better. She then asked if the EA wanted an assessment from staff or statistics about whether people are reading their news. Some may read but not care. You may want to know realities of what people think and if they care She said the one thing that is lacking is a brief description of how the EA is and what they do. She said this could be outlined in the introduction as well as explaining why employees should get involved.

Y. Miller suggests the information on communications since it is not a function of engagement and this is related to perception. C. Ferguson would like to ask staff perception of the expansion of the EA from 12 to 19. Were they aware? He also asked how the EA could achieve more diversity? L. Morris would like to find out if there are issues that they would like the EA to address with the university? This question could be a little tricky because it implies the EA can actually do something. C. Ferguson said he had 2 questions to suggest. The first is what are the barriers that keep non-exempt employees from becoming involved in the EA? Second, did you feel your voice was heard and/or how would you like the EA to approach results.

Y. Miller told the members to shy away from awareness, but strive for effectiveness and to see if people perceive you as a valid entity. Option for giving out include mailing and e-mailing. Do you represent Geneva too? B. Schaffner asked if the EA should vote if they wanted to do a census or whole campus? T. Grove it will depend on the cost. Dependent on the e-mailing and mailing dependent on the people who actively use their netids.

B. McKinney asked if it is confidential. L. Morris said staff need to know it is confidential but the info will be used and forwarded. Y. Miller said what would be helpful is that if people have other ideas. She will comply everything but there is still more information that she needs, like a brief info and accomplishments paragraph. This will help craft perspective. L. Morris will e-mail questions created during communications committee.

What is their preferred method of communication? Y. Miller asked if the EA will change the way they communicate based on the information. T. Grove said yes and it would be interesting to see if there is an overwhelming way people prefer to get information.

Y. Miller said Day Hall has communications covered plus you don’t want to waste any of your 30 questions on it, instead ask about content to see if what is sent is resonating. L. Morris agreed that PawPrint questions were not necessary.

c) Employee Engagement Survey Results — Marin Clarkberg, Marne Einarson and Cheri Fuerstenau

M. Clarkberg said the precursory results of the employee survey are available on their website. This constitutes a public release of the information. By unit it is hard to define but we are not talking about going down to little known supervisors. The size of units vary from 19–1000 and each vice president will be given results of their units and it will highlight their unit’s difference between the university. M. Clarkberg said they have no previous experience with employee surveys so they do not know what is going to have the most impact.

There were over 5,000 responses and 1734 open comments at the end of the survey. C. Fuerstenau is working on reading and coding them. C. Fuerstenau then handed out text clouds sheets that the EA could see the 150 most common words mentioned. M. Clarkberg said the comments were disproportional to the number of people who were dissatisfied. Issues you would expect came up such as over work and Kuali but they do not have any analysis as to the importance yet. Collecting and analyzing comments is much more complicated than the numbers given for the scales of data.

T. Grove asked if there was a timeline of when units will get their information. M. Clarkberg said they do not expect the unit reports will be made public. It is possible sharing across vice presidents and departments will happen. M. Clarkberg said they have four people looking at different aspects. The across the university analysis will take more time than the by unit will. By early spring there should be information available that is a little more nuanced to understand.

L. Croll Howell asked if they had data from other universities that could be cross-referenced with ours? M. Clarkberg said they did review a few employee surveys, one from Iowa and another private university who preferred to be anonymous. Iowa’s results are a bit better but nothing significantly variable.

C. Ferguson asked how often should we do it? M. Clarkberg said the frequency will depend on what changes take place. Chances are it will be more often than the faculty one which is every five years since turnover is more frequent with staff.

One costly aspect was paper surveys for people who didn’t/couldn’t do it online. There were 500 employees that turned in paper surveys (300 had never activated their netid)

B. McKinney asked the EA to recognize the team and all of their effort to pull this in such a short time.

C. Fuerstenau said the coding for this was looking at the comment and coming up with a descriptor. M. Clarkberg noted the written comments were very mixed. B. McKinney knows people who believe David Skorton and M. Opperman will be reading every comment. M. Clarkberg said they will be given the comments but in a way that is more streamlined and specific.

C. Ferguson asked if it would be possible to see exempt vs. non-exempt because we may see benefit in more specialized info. M. Clarkberg this is what the university report will focus on and the team is just beginning to work on this information. We will look on how much of issues is based off of pay band, varied tasks, etc. The EA’s access to more survey data would be decided by President Skorton.

T. Grove asked what surprised them the most about the survey. M. Clarkberg said it has been very educational. When they were reading open-ended comments they saw new things they have never seen before.

T. Grove asked if many people had contacted them about being uncomfortable filling out the survey on paper. M. Clarkberg said there were considerably more phone calls for this survey. There were also more concerns about confidentiality than previous surveys. She said they felt it was a reflection of this being the first staff survey and people’s high anxiety level in general.

C. Fuerstenau there were many people who wrote in to give thanks for the survey.

V. Old Business

a) January Retreat

We are set to have the EA half-day retreat on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 in the Physical Science building from 9 am - 1 pm. T. Grove said she has asked Claudia Wheatley to come and talk about communications. She also reported we are trying to get Notice and Respond to come. We may want to talk about the survey if there are things we want to bring to the President. A fair number of people said they would be unable to attend the retreat.

T. Grove said he is scheduled to attend the next EA meeting. Rather than sending a list so he talks at/to us, she would like to have a list of questions to ask on the spot so he can give more precise answers. T. Grove would like to know what information President Skorton is willing to give the EA regarding the survey. G. Stewart asked how much time the EA would have with President Skorton. A. O’Donnell said around 45 minutes.

L. Croll Howell said it would be good to know what level of response he expects from Deans and directors. T. Grove said she would like to ask for the unit level information. L. Meyerhoff asked what the EA would do with this. T. Grove said they could compare the units and see what is occurring in the higher satisfaction units. This would make units accountable for what is not working.

C. Ferguson suggested the EA request to meet with the unit heads and ask what they plan to do with the results? L. Croll Howell said it would be good to have 2–3 unit action steps that could be reported back to the EA. G. Stewart said it would be great to see some success stories published by the EA. T. Grove said she will put together these items as questions for the group.

VI. New Business

a) B. Schaffner - UA meeting update

The Campus Infrastructure Committee resubmitted the resolution on parking which was passed with some changes. More information was provided as to what was happening with accessibility and retired employees.

The resolution on unisex restrooms also passed.

There is a lot of progress with the CJC and Title IX. There is still more to come and all of this information is on the website if you are interested.

They also passed a resolution to cut ties with the Fair Labor Association until concerns on shady practices are addressed and corrected.

Finally, they also passed a resolution asking the Ombudsman to come to a UA meeting and report on the office activities and an overview of data.

VII. Open Forum

L. Croll Howell reported the Ithaca Common Counsel is voting on the bridges means restriction proposal this evening.

VIII. Adjournment

T. Grove made a motion to adjourn. C. Ferguson seconded and the EA adjourned at 1:36 p.m.