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May 10, 1999

Staff HR moves forward on implementing Service Center Project Report

By Barbara McKenna

A little more than a year ago, Staff HR launched an important examination of campus service centers with the aim of increasing efficiency and responsiveness. Staff HR Consulting Services conducted interviews and surveyed staff, unit managers, and administrators to learn what would make the service centers more functional and generated a report on their findings. Since the Service Center Project Report (SCPR) was completed in March 1998, a number of significant steps have been taken.

As a first step, two committees were formed and charged with making recommendations on how to best respond to the findings of the report. The committees are the Project Coordination Committee, established by Executive Vice Chancellor John Simpson and chaired by Linda Kittle of Management Services, and the Service Center Roles and Responsibilities Committee, established and chaired by Assistant Chancellor for Human Resources Julia Armstrong-Zwart.

The main focus of the Project Coordination Committee has been to address ways of improving coordination and communication of administrative projects, identified as a key area of concern in the SCPR. The committee began meeting last fall and has developed proposed guidelines and systems that project managers will be able to use as a way of more efficiently and effectively communicating and coordinating their efforts. The committee's recommendations should improve processes in such efforts as the consultation process that occurs prior to project approval and improved status communication to campus constituents as an administrative project progresses. The new approach will be used in a pilot program scheduled to begin this month and, once evaluated, is expected to be implemented across campus.

The Service Center Roles and Responsibilities Committee has been meeting on an almost weekly basis since fall to create a common understanding of the specific human resources responsibilities of service centers, and of central HR offices. Until now, as the SCPR findings underscored, there has been significant variance across the campus in how actions related to such personnel concerns as labor relations, recruitment, and classification and salary have been handled. The committee is working to delineate responsibilities at each level, to identify the training required for staff to be successful, and plans to make recommendations about optimal service center structures. The result of their work so far is a set of comprehensive matrixes that can be used as a guideline across the campus for most personnel activities. According to committee member Celena Allison, these initial matrixes will be available for consideration and feedback beginning in mid-May.

Also, as recommended in the SCPR, the staff HR procedures manual has been posted online. Not only that, a search engine is available on the site, making for easy access to policy by using simple keywords. You can find the online manual at: www2.ucsc.edu/comp/policies/

To see the Service Center Project Report, visit: www2.ucsc.edu/staff_hr/sc_project/screport.htm


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