june

FROM DIANE'S DESK

diane

2007

Employee Survey

In February we launched the second all Business Affairs employee survey. I am pleased to share with you that we were joined this time by the Office of Development and Stanford Alumni Affairs. Thanks to Suzanne Ferris for being an advocate to expand the scope of the survey and for persuading Martin Shell and Howard Wolf to participate.

The survey went to 1,129 Stanford employees of which 815 were from the Business Affairs organization. Overall survey response was 81%. Business Affairs had a slightly lower response rate of 75% which was about 5% lower than our response rate for the 2005 survey. For HR the response rate was 70%. Part of the problem with the lower response rate this year was that a large number of Business Affairs employees (including HR) forwarded the survey to another email address which meant the results were not counted. Also, some employees completed a second survey without deleting the first survey and this also caused the results to be excluded.

For HR overall, the top three areas which showed improvement from last year:

Satisfaction with Pay where we improved by 11 percentage points to 43% favorable, which is right at the national norm. However, we still trail Business Affairs on this dimension.

Job Stress where we improved by 10 percentage points to 59% favorable, which is close to both the national norm and Business Affairs.

Strategy and Mission where we improved by 9 percentage points to 44% but are still below the norm and below Business Affairs.

We continue to be very positive on the Satisfaction with Benefits dimension, scoring 84% favorable, and an improvement of 8 percentage points and above the national norm of 64% and Business Affairs at 80%.

Our scores declined in two areas:

Satisfaction with the Work scored 70% favorable, a 4 percentage point decline and roughly in line with the norm and Business Affairs.

Coworker Performance and Cooperation is now 78% favorable, a 5 percentage point decline, but still better than the national norm and in line with Business Affairs.

Each manager has received results of this survey for his/her work group if there were enough participants. As with our last survey, work group results were only reported where five or more employees participated. If you are in a work group that did not get results for your group, you will be receiving overall HR data to use in your action planning.

I have asked each manager to share the results of the survey with his/her staff and solicit input for actions that can be taken to improve the work environment. Action plans need to be completed by the end of June.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey and for working with your manager to identify the actions that we can take to improve the work environment. Only with your input and ideas can we make these improvements, so please be candid and creative in your action planning sessions.



hrmission

This is the last of three articles on descriptive words in our HR mission statement.

Strategic. Innovative. Flexible.

We are sometimes viewed as creators and holders of rules and processes, which is indeed one important part of our work. How, then, are we also flexible? Susan Hoerger and Linda Faris answered some questions to spark our thinking about this aspect of our mission:

What does flexibility mean to us?

Susan: Flexibility means searching for solutions that fit the problem, not looking for a cookie cutter or shoehorn fix.

Linda: Flexibility means being willing to consider accommodating the needs of others within reason.

When we are being flexible, what are we doing?

Linda: We are willing to consider equally the opinions of others along with our own before we give advice.

Susan: We are being responsive to the true needs of the staff, students, supervisors, and managers we serve, not asking them to have textbook problems with textbook solutions.

What skills do we need in order to be flexible?

Susan: Ability to listen; to view a situation from multiple perspectives; to explore the range of acceptable outcomes; to recognize that there are usually many different ways (not just one “right way”) to address a situation; to be persistent.

Linda: Ability to be open and understanding, weigh the situation with respect to short-term and long-term impact and stand by decisions.

 

TIPS & TRICKS #2

Reclassifications and Grades in PeopleSoft

For the second installment of Tips & Tricks, I’d like to share with you some information that I hope will allow you to avoid submitting a few help tickets in the future.

After you’ve reclassified a position at the position level in PeopleSoft and then updated the person’s salary at the job data level, you’ll notice that the grade hasn’t changed on the Salary Plan screen.

Tip 1: In order to “push” the grade change to the job data level, you’ll need to delete the position number on the “work location” screen, tab out of it, re-enter the position number, and tab out again. After completing those steps, be sure to check that the new salary is still showing since it may have zeroed out. Be sure to re-enter the salary if necessary.

Tip 2: For those of you who weren’t aware of this issue with PeopleSoft, you may want to pull a report from ReportMart1 listing your past reclassifications and make sure that the grade at the job level matches up with the grade at the position level.

Many thanks to Al Roa, of DMS, for his contributions to this article!

Sean Bywaters, Human Resources Associate
Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE)

 

wellnessBENEFITS BEAT

Another Successful Ending – Thanks to all who attended the Wellness Fair. We estimate between 2,400 and 2,500 visited the Fair – a 25% increase from last year. Among other activities, we gave over 500 cholesterol tests, passed out hundreds of recipes for healthy cooking and introduced many attendees to the advantages of having a robust Department of Recreation & Wellness here on campus. We hope you spend this year jumping, walking, eating and exercising your way to a healthy lifestyle.

 

Robbie DeBastiani
Manager, Benefits Communications

 

ginger

Ginger Walmsley
Benefits Analyst

Ginger Walmsley sailed into our interview on a bicycle wearing a helmet and bright yellow reflector jacket. She probably wanted to pretend she was still on an adventure, and as she was riding a bike on campus, she actually was. When Ginger, a member of our News Team, found out she would be our bio candidate for this month, she joked that just leaving town can get you into trouble. If that’s so, she must be in trouble a lot.

While working toward her B.A. in Psychology at Colorado Women’s College, Ginger was fortunate enough to spend her junior year in Vienna, Austria (was that a coincidence, Herr Freud?). That planted the travel bug and she hasn’t stopped traveling since.

lion sunset

Ginger and her husband, Joe, both love to travel and do a lot of it. Their latest adventure was a trip to South Africa. Although they usually go on their own, for this particular neck of the woods they decided to join an educational tour group, and it was a great experience. They spent time in the “bush” on two game reserves driving in open Land Rovers and looking for “tigers and lions and bears, oh my!” And they found them – well, maybe not bears. This was luxurious camp living, with gourmet meals, thatched cottage living, and “roughing it” in huge tents on raised wooden platforms. Cocktails on the veranda, anyone?

shantytown house

They also spent a week in the Winelands, Capetown and Johannesburg, where they visited Soweto township. Townships were the only areas in which urban blacks were allowed to live during apartheid, and the conditions run the gamut from open sewers and shanties to luxurious million-dollar homes. Groups in the townships are now sponsoring tours for people to visit and learn about conditions good and bad. One of the outstanding parts of the trip was the opportunity to talk to many different people and hear their opinions about a very complicated subject – the future of South Africa. Ginger was pleased to observe that many people she spoke with were hopeful that things will change for the better.

ostrch water

Ginger grew up in Pocatello, Idaho and first left home to attend college in Denver, where she also happened to meet Joe. After working for a year in Washington D.C. writing civil service test questions, she moved to Minneapolis and got an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Oh, did I mention Joe was there too? The couple married and moved to Utah where Ginger got her M.S.W. and Gerontology Certificate from the University of Utah, a more useful degree than Anthropology for entering the wonderful world of work.

Ginger and Joe moved to California in 1976 where Ginger worked in gerontology and then for several start-ups as a Jane-of-all-trades. Eventually, she started focusing on HR and finance. When the start-up she was working for was acquired by a large company, Ginger found the work less satisfying and started looking around for something else. A friend mentioned Stanford and she realized this might be the perfect spot for someone like herself who has always loved school and the mission of the educational institution! The rest is history…at least history back to 1997 when Ginger became an analyst in the Benefits world. Ginger works primarily with the health and welfare programs. She helps design, implement and oversee the programs. She is also deals with compliance issues, the retiree medical program, the department’s budgets, financial reporting, and audits.

Ginger’s favorite Stanford benefit is the SCRP match, but she really just loves Stanford for itself. Always keen on education, she thinks it’s really special to work in an environment where there is an opportunity to do something like listen to the St. Lawrence Quartet for free at lunch!

Oh, I forgot to mention that Ginger is also a musician (piano and clarinet) and has sung with various choruses on the Peninsula as well as with the Stanford Summer Chorus.

Ginger seems to be interested in almost everything. She reads from many genres, loves dance movies – mostly the Astaire/Rogers films – and she’s even taught Tico, her 16-year-old cockatiel, a repertoire of songs including Pop Goes the Weasel, La Cucaracha, and snippets from HMS Pinafore. Watch out Savoyards! Although Tico is presently in love with a clothespin, Ginger is still in love with her husband of 37 years!

Darn! I forgot to ask about that next trip …

 

Sharys Wheeler
HRM, School of Education