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GUEST COLUMNIST

Mario Acquesta

Mario Acquesta

 

News from HR Management Information Services


HR on the Move

Jenny Uchida, Manager, Finance & Administration, and her staff are working on the upcoming move of all HR employees to new quarters in Jordan Quad (modulars, here we come!) and are the point of contact for HR to keep all details associated with the move in order. Be sure to cut her and her staff some slack; moving to new digs is never easy, but they are doing their best to ensure HR staff needs are met. Everyone should take this opportunity to divest themselves of unneeded paper! You know who you are. Don’t make me name names.

PeopleSoft Upgrade This Summer

peoplesoftThe PeopleSoft system, used for HR, Payroll and Benefits (as well as Student Administration), is being upgraded to version 9 this summer. The system changes will be mostly on the technical side, with slight differences to the user experience. These include navigational improvements to decrease the number of clicks to reach menu items. I can sense your excitement. I know click reduction is a big deal. You can’t wait to get your hands on this new version!

Cindy Martin is heading up the project from HR, along with Anh Hoang, Cristen Shinbashi, Karin Taber and Vanessa Alcantar. The IS team is currently focused on UAT and parallel testing. I’m not going to tell you what this means because it makes me sound smart. Vicky Tran and Al Roa are handling campus readiness by working with a vendor to create new documentation and training materials for administrative users. Vicky and Al have in-depth knowledge of user concerns and issues, so are perfect choices to tell the users ‘whazzup’ with v9.

New Talent on Board

Please congratulate Cindy Martin on her promotion to the newly created position of HRIS Manager. Cindy joined HRIS in 2007. Her incredible skill at managing a gazillion (count ’em, gazillion) details simultaneously will help her keep sane during the months ahead!

Please welcome Anh Hoang, who recently joined HRIS in a Business Analyst position from the Graduate School of Business. Anh has been at Stanford for seven years and her insight into business processes and analysis of system data is a great addition to the team. Anh is a fabulous resource for throwing parties, too…

Please congratulate Patti Smilovitz on her promotion to Supervisor of HRDS, a group she joined in August 2006. Patti has many years of previous supervisory experience, not only herding cats, but people, too. Patti’s vacated Disability Leaves Analyst position will be filled soon.

Additional Initiatives

The fun never stops in HRMIS. Here are some other things we’ve been working on:

• In January, Shawna Powell-Blunt and her group helped make the transition of disability vendors from Unum Provident to Liberty Mutual smooth and graceful.
• Strategic planning for next three years: The identification of unit priorities and funding needs are underway.
• Trovix upgrade: An upgrade to the applicant tracking and requisition system will occur next month.
• HR/Payroll Imaging System implementation: A new document imaging system will be implemented during the summer to scan all HR/Payroll files.
• HR Metrics Project: An effort to identify all areas in HR that need data gathered and analyzed for planning purposes. The first phase will be rolled out next month.



SLAC Update

People frequently ask me what we do at SLAC. SLAC is a science lab that seeks to understand the structure and dynamics of matter from the smallest to the largest scales of the universe, and benefit society through this understanding. SLAC publishes an electronic newsletter every work day called SLAC Today. This newsletter announces what is happening at SLAC, what new discoveries have been made, as well as other events and lectures taking place on the SLAC campus. Go to http://today.slac.stanford.edu if you’d like to subscribe.

SLAC
MSNBC: Picture of the BaBar experiment concerning antimatter

In December 2007 a partnership was created with SLAC, the Department of Energy and Stanford University to create a more constructive working relationship. The Commitment articulates that the mission of SLAC is science and our goal is to be the best laboratory in the world in our chosen fields. In order to be able to achieve that goal, we must conduct our research and operations in a responsible, sustainable and safe manner, recognizing the stakeholders we serve and our responsibilities to the scientific community, to SLAC employees and to the American people who make our work possible.

Charlotte Carlson
SLAC Training Specialist

 

BENEFITS BEAT

Wellness Fair

Stanford Benefits and our partners at Stanford Athletics – RPE&W, would like to thank all those who participated in our fourth annual Wellness Fair. It was attended by an estimated 2,500 faculty and staff. Over 600 people started on the road to wellness with a cholesterol test while 100’s of others had various health screenings, sampled a healthy meal and tried out various exercise equipment.

Robbie DeBastiani
Manager, Benefits Communications


Wellness and Sandra Day O’Connor
A personal account from Ann Allison-Marsh

Normally when you hear the name of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor you think of – trailblazer, first woman on the Supreme Court, or a woman who got her law degree from Stanford when women rarely became lawyers. Wellness is not the first thing that comes to mind.

But Justice O’Connor is a woman of many surprises, and I was fortunate to be able to hear her speak to a small group of students and staff on April 22, 2008 on Personal Health and Wellness. About 40 people attended the session in the press box of Stanford’s football stadium. The discussion was moderated by Tara Van VanDerveer, Women’s Basketball Coach, and Laura L. Carstensen, PhD, Professor of Psychology and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. With our focus on wellness, I thought it would be interesting to share some of her comments.

 It turns out that in addition to all the incredible accomplishments in her life, the Justice is a bit of a fitness fanatic. She explained that she always found a way to make sure that fitness was a part of her daily life. She said that it was something that she did during her college days at Stanford and continued when she was working and raising a family. She would find a local Y and attend various fitness classes as her scheduled allowed.

Ann Allison-Marsh & Sandra Day O'Connor

When she arrived at the Supreme Court, she contacted the local Y and coordinated the implementation of fitness classes three days a week. She eventually added a yoga class so that they had an activity four days a week. Clearly she was ahead of her time as far as getting wellness activities into the workplace.

One of her more memorable quotes of the day was regarding the Stanford Women’s Basketball team. “If we all played basketball as well as that Wiggins woman, we’d be better off,” she joked.

Justice O’Connor’s bottom line message was clear: We must stay physically active and fit as we go through the various stages of our lives. Regular exercise makes us more alert and effective, and it needs to be a life-long habit.

Many people know that I’m on my bike a lot, and once a week I have the yoga mat with me. Now when I gather my yoga mat and head to class, I will think of Justice O’Connor going to yoga at the Supreme Court. What a truly inspirational visualization!

 

 

HR BIO

Lee Lyon


 

 

 Lee Lyon

How many of us can claim that we have been in our current position for nearly two decades, have had only three bosses all of whom were a pleasure to work with, AND just can’t stop raving about what an “absolutely fabulous” staff we have? Lee Lyon, the HR Director at SLAC can claim all of that and more.

In fact, Lee’s relationship with Stanford goes back even further than having worked here for almost two decades. Lee is actually a graduate of Stanford. If you ask what his major was, Lee will tell you that he earned a degree in psychology but his real “major” was bridge. What does a guy with an undergraduate degree in psych and a LOT of strategies in bridge do after graduation? Why, enroll in a masters program, of course! The masters program led to a “startup” (if the term had been coined back then) between Lee and two professors in sports psychology. For his thesis, Lee developed a personality inventory that helped to identify who would make the most successful professional football players. Lee’s 15 minutes of fame came when this organization and their cutting-edge ideas were featured in Sports Illustrated.

Lee’s career in Human Resources began at Blue Cross where he held a number of different positions, first as a training manager and then as acting director of Human Resources. However, it wasn’t until he took a job in line management that he really understood what it was like to work within the policies he helped develop. This firsthand experience has shaped him into the HR executive that he is today.

What does Lee do when he is not “HR directing?” Two things: golf and travel. In fact it’s a very poorly kept secret that the restaurant at the Stanford Golf Course is THE place to find Lee (a past president of the club) during lunchtime if you must reach him for an urgent HR issue.

 

If you ask Lee where he has traveled recently, you will get a list so long that you wonder if in fact he has a body double that works at SLAC while the real Lee is traveling around the world. Some of his favorite vacations include a month in Spain, a month in Italy, three weeks in Bali and Indonesia, two weeks in Alaska and periodic trips to Hawaii. (Not all during the same year.) But his REAL favorite was a golfing trip to Northern Ireland, where he played on St. Andrews, the old and very famous golf course where the game was first played. Lee said, “To stand on the first hole at St. Andrews and know that every famous golfer from the beginning of the game stood in the same place is overwhelming.”

Lee in Scotland

We understand Lee plans to retire sometime this summer. Lee is vague about his “post-Stanford” plans, but he talks about playing more golf, exploring photography, doing some consulting and teaching, and maybe even moving to Chico to hang out with his son’s family – and especially his two granddaughters. If these plans materialize, we will look forward to one memorable retirement party…maybe on the Stanford Golf Course!

Elaine Chiu and Robbie DeBastiani
Stanford Benefits