Minutes* Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 3:00 – 4:30 Room 238A Morrill Hall Present: Kathryn VandenBosch (chair), Peter Bitterman, Aaron Carlson, Nancy Carpenter, Christopher Cramer, Carol Chomsky, Shawn Curley, Nancy Ehlke, Michael Hancher, Russell Luepker, Jonathan Lundberg, Jan McCulloch, Steven Pearthree, Francis Strahan, Sarah Waldemar Absent: Nick Bergantine, Thomas Brothen, Don Cavalier, Bree Dalager, Barbara Elliott, Marti Hope Gonzales, Thomas Haarstick, Jeffrey Kahn, Luke Nichols, Michael Oakes, Terrance Paape Guests: Vice President Carol Carrier, Mary Luther (Human Resources); Professor Ted Higman (Chair, Senate Committee on Information Technologies) Others: Becky Hippert, Vickie Courtney (Senate Office), Patty Dion, Joe Kelly, Nan Wilhelmson (Human Resources) [In these minutes: (1) attracting and retaining talented staff; (2) resolution on Google; (3) dockets] 1. Attracting and Retaining Talented Staff Professor VandenBosch convened the meeting at 3:00 and welcomed Vice President Carrier and Ms. Luther to discuss the retention of staff. Vice President Carrier began by saying that there are questions about staffing issues and the relationship between civil service and P&A staff, and they will discuss where things appear to be headed. This is an important topic, she said, because as the external world becomes more economically healthy, it will be a challenge for the University to retain staff. Most staff are recruited in a local market and the University needs to think about how it will retain a strong staff. Ms. Luther distributed copies of slides and began by indicating the key indicators for retaining faculty and staff. She identified the strategies (recruiting and placing talented and diverse faculty and staff to best meet organizational needs, mentoring and training, recognizing and rewarding, and engaging and retaining them). There are also a number of key indicators, such as management of the workforce, quality and diversity of incoming faculty and staff, performance, quality of management and supervision, education, development, management, and leadership, salary and compensation, awards and distinctions, and employee engagement and retention. Classification and compensation structures and systems align with and support University strategy and goals is, Ms. Luther said. They allow employees and managers to navigate and support * These minutes reflect discussion and debate at a meeting of a committee of the University of Minnesota Senate; none of the comments, conclusions, or actions reported in these minutes represents the views of, nor are they binding on, the Senate, the Administration, or the Board of Regents. Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 2 career development—they let employees figure out how to advance and identify the skill sets needed. The classification and compensation systems guide appropriate determination of pay, and use both internal and external markets. They promote effective use of resources, so the University does not over- pay or under-pay and they provide information to managers so they do not need to gather it themselves. Finally, they reward job growth and competency development and performance. They conducted an examination of staff structures and systems, Ms. Luther told the Committee, and included both civil service and P&A staff in the effort. They interviewed 29 deans and directors, conducted focus-group discussions on all campuses with 303 people, analyzed promotional patterns and other information, and completed a benchmarking study that included a literature review, discussions with15 peer institutions, and five public and private firms. A key recommendation from the study was to provide transparent career paths for civil service and P&A employees, Ms. Luther said. This is important to deans and directors as well as employees. Doing so includes having job families, job series, and job levels, progression from civil service to P&A positions (to help preclude the situation where two people are doing the same job, one a civil service employee and the other a P&A employee), University-wide talent management (most employees stay within a college and don't take advantage of what the larger University has to offer), and setting salary parameters for civil service and P&A staff (so that, for example, people who apply for jobs have more knowledge of the potential pay). Ms. Luther identified the list of 17 proposed job families, ranging from administration and athletics & recreation to grants administration, health and animal care, legal services, research, and student services. They did not just make up the list, she said, and a number of universities, including Michigan, Berkeley, and Indiana, have job families and paths. The list could change as they do more research. The status of the job-families initiative is that current studies are underway for four of the families: human resources, information technology, communication, and grants administration. Dr. Carrier said these are very intensive studies that they are doing with a small staff; so the plan that the majority of the job family studies will be completed by calendar year 2013 is reasonable. Each study has a project sponsor and a working group to identify what is needed for careers in that job family, Ms. Luther said (e.g., Vice President Cawley for information technology, Associate Vice President Webb for grants administration). The principles they follow are collaboration, communication, and a systems approach; she outlined the process being used and the schedule. The benefits to employees from the job-family initiative include career navigation that includes transparent paths with clear criteria for reaching the next level and a University-wide system. They also include recognition and reward for job growth and transparency of pay parameters. They want people to understand what they are being paid, why, and how to increase their salaries. These characteristics become especially important during periods of no salary increases, Ms. Luther said. The benefits to the University from the initiative include ease of administration: Pay parameters are determined centrally and available to units, which reduces duplication of effort, Ms. Luther told the Committee. In addition, the promotional criteria are clearly defined, which makes it easier for managers to talk to employees about their careers in a factual manner. Another institutional benefit is effective use Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 3 of resources, because pay parameters reflect the external and internal market. Finally, the initiative supports planning and reporting by identifying employees by function and level. Ms. Luther asked if there were questions. Professor Hancher asked about mobility within the University: Will clearly-defined job families prevent easy mobility across families? Will employees be restricted to positions within one job family? Ms. Luther said there are many positions that do not fit easily in one job family and that the job families are not meant to be silos. The goal is to build the job families in a systematic way so that employees can easily cross from one to another. For example, if levels of work across job families have four levels, then if one is at level 2 in one family, one can think about transferring to another level in a different family; for that reason, they are trying to be consistent across families. Moreover, some families are closely aligned and they want to promote the possibility of lateral movement. Professor Curley said that while consistency sounds good, the bureaucracy can be more limiting for employees. To what extent will units have leeway on the pay parameters, for example? Ms. Luther agreed that they do not want build a bureaucracy that limits units; they are trying to build a system that provides guidance and yet still allows management discretion.. In terms of pay parameters, they are not setting narrow ranges that restrict units, and in the top level of each structure there may be some level of flexibility.. In addition, the compensation team is working directly with subject matter experts within the colleges as they develop the system. Professor Chomsky said she had three inter-related questions. This is nice in theory but implementation will be important; she said she knows of employees who are doing more than what is contained in their job descriptions, but the unit isn't moving them into a different classification. What is being done to make sure that units are providing the kind of mobility and recognition that the system sets up? Second, that problem may be compounded in the coming year, or several years, when economic challenges mean pay increases may not be possible, so moving someone into a different job classification may not be possible for financial reasons. And third, how does this compare to the circumstances of unionized employees, if they can answer that question? Classification structures provide guidance and balance to achieve system-wide equity and advancement of employees, Ms. Luther said. These systems recognize and reward employees when they take on a significant amount of work at a higher level and ensure that positions that perform similar work (function and level) are classified in the same manner. Everyone is taking on additional work, some at a higher level than their current position. The clear definition of levels makes it easier for everyone to agree on when a position should be at a certain level. If there are too many levels, the system gets too costly. If there are too few levels, managers will not have clear guidance on when a pay increase is appropriate. They cannot please everyone, Ms. Luther acknowledged, but they do want units to be able to reward higher-level work and create a system that provides equity of classification and information for employees and managers to promote career growth. There are a large number of employees who want to stay at the University, Vice President Carrier commented, but they also want to be recognized for their work. The University does not have employee turnover comparable to many local organizations. Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 4 Professor Chomsky asked if they are hearing directly from employees that they are being treated as the system envisions they should be. What they heard from the focus groups, Ms. Luther related, is that employees would like their managers to be more involved in their career development. The job family structures will provide managers information to play a more active role in helping employees. Professor Luepker said he admired Vice President Carrier's optimism about an always-expanding future, but what he has been hearing about is shrinking the University and that the legislature may think that University benefits are too good. Candidates for the Board of Regents say the University should be smaller. This discussion has been about increases and promotions when, in fact there, may be fewer employees. Dr. Carrier said the University needs a system that retains the strongest employees who are motivated to do a good job. This system helps keep the best people. What about removing less effective employees, Professor Luepker asked? That is hard to do, Dr. Carrier said. They are stressing performance and merit pay systems, but universities typically are not good at them. Mr. Strahan asked if employees expressed concern during the study of civil service compensation regarding employees who perform the same work but one employee is in a V-classification and one is not. Ms. Luther said the concern did not come up—and if it had, it would be one that they would need to address in order to ensure compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act. Professor VandenBosch thanked Dr. Carrier and Ms. Luther and said this is an important subject; she said she would prompt Committee members to send additional questions. 2. Resolution on Google Professor VandenBosch now welcomed Professor Higman, Chair of the Senate Committee on Information Technologies (SCIT), to the meeting to discuss a resolution from SCIT concerning adoption of Google for email and calendars. The resolution read as follows: The University Senate recommends that all students, faculty, and staff move to University of Minnesota Google e-mail and calendar as soon as it is available to their unit so that the University may be able to see the immediate benefits related to: - A platform for collaboration - Enhanced tool-sets that offer greater features and functionality - Robust interoperability with mobile devices - Enhanced user support - Cost savings from reducing and/or eliminating equipment and licensing/support contracts The motion was accompanied by a long explanatory comment. Professor Higman explained that SCIT has had a number of presentations from the Office of Information Technology (OIT) about the transition to Google email and calendar. All of the SCIT members have made the transition, but they have received data from OIT indicating that in some colleges 100% of people have made the transition while in others the transition rate has been very low. Some faculty members are reluctant to make the transition because they fear they will lose items, or that it will be a rickety system and they will lose information again. SCIT members have all had positive Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 5 experiences and SCIT believes that if faculty are dragging their feet, that could mean more support for UMCal than should be provided. They spoke with Vice President Cawley and then prepared this resolution urging speedy adoption of Google. Professor VandenBosch recalled that Vice President Cawley and Associate Vice President Duin spoke with this Committee on more than one occasion about the transition and did not identify problems. Does SCIT know of any? They do not, Professor Higman said. Some complain about the time it takes to check email, but the problems have largely gone away. Professor McCulloch asked how this resolution would help with people who are not interested in making the transition. Professor Higman said that he spoke with Vice President Cawley and asked if the resolution would be helpful; Mr. Cawley thought it would be, especially in urging faculty members to make the change. Professor McCulloch wondered if it might not be more beneficial to say that on X date, no other systems will be used. There is such a date, Professor Higman said, early in the next fiscal year. Mr. Strahan said that he has made the switch but that his college is saying its staff may not make the change because of HIPAA concerns. If one uses Google email, the information goes outside the University. Most of the Academic Health Center colleges have stopped moving to Google. This resolution does not address security issues. Professor Higman said that SCIT has HIPAA on its agenda, but these AHC concerns are news to him. Making the change is not an option for faculty in the Medical School, Professor Bitterman reported; a large number of faculty members have an issue with security, a problem that must be solved. Professor Chomsky reported that the Law School clinics have not made the transition for the same reason. She is dragging her feet because she has ten years of correspondence on Thunderbird and the files may be too big and she has concerns about timing—every time she has changed technology in the middle of the academic year, she has come to regret it. Ms. Waldemar said that the Committee should urge that this problem is solved so that everyone can be on the same system. Even apart from security, there are a number of reasons faculty members are not interested in making the transition, Professor Carpenter said, and she said she doubted the resolution would make people move. She found the migration to be easy enough, but the aftermath has been extremely frustrating, and she said she would be curious to know how many are in this camp (i.e., that these applications (mail, calendar, etc.). She surmised the resolution would not provoke a favorable reaction. Professor VandenBosch said that she had also migrated to Google and found it smooth, and that she likes the calendar in email, Google docs, and Google video; the latter, Professor Cramer added, in his experience provides superior performance to that of Skype. As for HIPAA, Professor Cramer commented, the implication is that the current University system is more secure than that of Google. He said he flatly does not believe that. Once the information goes outside the University, Google owns it, Mr. Strahan said. University servers are secure within the University. Email goes out unencrypted, but email from a umn.edu account to another umn.edu account can only be seen by someone who also has a umn.edu account. Anyone on Google, on the other hand, could see Google email. Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 6 Professor VandenBosch said that she thought the Faculty Consultative Committee had heard about these issues. During the transition, the University's infrastructure would continue to be used but Google software would be adopted, and that emails at the University would not be mixed up with the rest of Google email. The goal, Professor Cramer pointed out, is to shut down the University server farm so that it has no hardware and the cost of maintaining such hardware is eliminated. If there is a date certain for the transition, Professor Chomsky said, it must take into account HIPAA and other such concerns—it can't be before those issues are resolved—and any such date must be advertised well in advance so those who haven’t yet migrated are aware of the deadline. Professor Higman said that UMCal would go away in a year, and to get Google calendar, one must sign up for Google email. Mr. Pearthree reported that Ross Janssen, the Academic Health Center security officer, has asked who has made the transition to Google without authorization about health care is probably out of compliance with HIPAA. Security is a concern, Professor Luepker agreed; patients write emails with Protected Health Information (PHI) to faculty and staff in the AHC—and HIPAA violations are a felony. Professor VandenBosch said this discussion also raises questions about student data and grades. Professor Higman said SCIT reviewed this question with Academic Support Resources and they are satisfied with a password-protected computer. Professor VandenBosch said she sensed the Committee is not ready to forward the resolution to the University Senate. Professor Cramer said the problem is that conflicting messages are being sent by OIT and the Academic Health Center and that higher-level coordination within the administration is what is required, not a message to the faculty, which seems prepared ultimately to make use of whatever option is deemed adequate. Someone needs to identify unambiguously whether there are problems with security; the answer to this question may need to draw on advice from the Office of the General Counsel. There are ten colleges with HIPAA-related questions, Professor Bitterman said, so it goes beyond the AHC. He also emphasized Professor Luepker's point about the felony; this is not like a parking ticket, he said. Professor Higman said that SCIT would have a discussion with Vice President Cawley. Professor Cramer suggested there be a representative from the General Counsel's office. Professor Luepker suggested they talk with Mr. Janssen, who is an attorney. Mr. Carlson asked what the implications are for intellectual property. A concern about that is why his department does not use Google docs, Mr. Strahan said, because they do not stay on University servers and others could get to them. They want the information locked down. Professor Cramer responded that the Faculty Consultative Committee heard from Mr. Cawley that OIT has to deal with 10,000 security incidents per year on University computers, so it is inaccurate to say that the University's environment is secure. The only perfectly secure computer is one that is not connected to the internet. The question is not who has perfect security, but who can provide greater practical security, the U of M or Google? Insofar as the handout from Professor Higman notes that both Genentech and Motorola have moved their IT functions to Google, it would seem that concerns about intellectual property have been vetted by organizations with considerably higher sensitivity to this issue than the University. Senate Consultative Committee Thursday, January 20, 2011 7 Professor Chomsky observed that the resolution from SCIT seems to be only for the purpose of educating the faculty, since it doesn't compel any behavior. She suggested to Professor Higman that SCIT think about a way this Committee and the Senate could help to spread the word about the reasons for the transition (the financial implications) and the benefits to the user of moving to the Google system. They would like to, Professor Higman said, and OIT believes that Google mail is more efficient and Google calendar is better and more secure. Professor Chomsky said the SCIT resolution can go on the agenda without action by this Committee and it could be allotted time for discussion. If the purpose is educational, it may be enough for SCIT to present and explain it. Professor VandenBosch said that Vice President Cawley should be present for that discussion. Ms. Waldemar said that even if the Academic Health Center cannot or does not want to use Google, she said she did not understand why it did not use the calendar system for non-HIPAA-related matters. Professor VandenBosch thanked Professor Higman for bringing the resolution to the Committee. [Note: The resolution was subsequently withdrawn.] 3. Dockets Professor VandenBosch explained to the Committee that there is no docket approval because there was insufficient business for a Senate meeting on February 3 (because items had to be postponed). As a result, there will be a Faculty Senate meeting on February 24 and a University Senate meeting on March 3. The faculty will use the February 3 time for a question-and-answer/comment session on housekeeping amendments to the tenure code. After that announcement, she adjourned the meeting at 4:15. -- Gary Engstrand University of Minnesota