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EMPLOYEE RESOURCES

During the Sept. 8 town hall, Associate Vice Chancellor Karen Hull encouraged employees to take advantage of various programs, including:

• Career Navigation Series — to help in this time of great transition
• — offered as part of the Career Navigation Series, and separately

She also urged people to take care of themselves, and to seek help if needed from the .

The Davis campus’s shared service center will “go live” in mid-February with 72 full-time equivalent positions, university officials said this week in a much-anticipated announcement.

Addressing some 300 people at a Sept. 8 town hall (at least 640 others clicked open the live webcast), project leaders emphasized one message above all others:

If you work in one of the participating administrative units, and your job touches upon finance, human resources or payroll, talk with your supervisor and consider applying to work in the center — without delay.

Upon its opening, the center will handle selected business tasks for the chancellor and provost offices, Administrative and Resource Management, External Relations, Information and Educational Technology, the Office of Research (central administration), the Office of University Development, and Student Affairs.

An unspecified number of information technology jobs associated with help desk functions and desktop support will be added to the center toward the end of March 2012.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi thanked and commended the shared service center project teams for their yearlong effort, part of the campus’s Organizational Excellence Initiative.

“You had the strength, the ideas and the interest to come together and do something very new and very unique for a university,” she said, noting how the shared service center will enable the university’s administrative units to provide the highest-quality service at the lowest possible cost.

“I’m really very proud for … your attitude, for your interest, for your belief in the institution and for your commitment to making this place a better place” — and addressing the public’s demand for greater efficiency in the �������ϲ����Ͽ� system.

�������ϲ����Ͽ� Davis officials are estimating a savings of $25 million from now through 2015-16, after subtracting the start-up costs, followed by annual savings of $10 million thereafter.

“Our organization needs to change,” Katehi said, “because if we don’t change, I don’t think we will be able to survive the … financial difficulties we are facing this year.”

Recruitment under way

The shared service center is already recruiting for managers (closing date Sept. 12) and supervisors (closing date Sept. 20). The recruitment period for other staff positions will run from Sept. 19 through Oct. 7. Click to search jobs (choose “OE Shared Service Center” in the departmental drop-down menu).

Eligibility extends to all Davis campus employees for the manager and supervisor positions, while eligibility for the staff jobs will be limited, initially, to employees in the units that are participating in the shared service center.

In a text message to the town hall moderator, someone in the Web audience wondered about having to apply for work in the shared service center, even before knowing what would happen to his or her existing job.

“My advice would be, if you’re on the fence, apply,” responded the moderator, ARM Vice Chancellor John Meyer.

Indeed, the transition to the shared service center is a balancing act for everyone, for the employees who are unsure of their futures with the university, and for the unit administrators who must carefully restructure their own staffing models to compensate for the loss of work to the shared service center.

To start the transition phase, chief operating officers are evaluating how much time each employee devotes to the finance, HR and payroll processes that are likely to be transferred to the shared service center.

Click to see the “future state vision” process lists, in draft form, and the guiding principles for the “future state vision.”

Hull urged employees: “Look at your own responsibilities. (And), if your responsibilities are affiliated with transactional work in HR, payroll or finance, you should have a conversation with your supervisor, because you know that work is going out of your department and you are vulnerable for layoff.”

Uncertainties and fears

Katehi noted: “What you are doing is very hard … trying to redefine yourselves, your own positions. And, then, secondly, you are doing (it) without having too many examples from other universities.

“So you have to be creative. … You have to face your own uncertainties and fears, and you have to go beyond those and do something very positive and very memorable for institution.”

She said “ultimate success” will come when “all the administrative processes become invisible,” and the university can focus more on its academic mission.

Employees interested in working in the shared service center are being advised to submit multiple applications, one for each functional area in which individual employees may have an interest.

Hull said job interviews are planned all through November, with hiring decisions to be made by Nov. 30 and training to begin in mid-December. Job classifications range from “___” assistant III to analyst VI-supervisor.

When all is said and done, Hull said, the administrative units will see a reduction of approximately 60 full-time equivalent positions in finance, HR and payroll.

This does not equal 60 layoffs. Normal attrition will certainly figure in the process, Hull said, with some employees retiring and others going to work elsewhere, on and off campus. Some positions, in fact, have already been vacated — and held open, in anticipation of the shared service center’s opening. Other employees have opted or will opt for the voluntary separation program.

And, yes, there will be layoffs, Hull said. “But we don’t know the exact number at this time,” she said.

Technological boost

The center’s staffing model — 72 full-time equivalent positions, or FTEs — comprises five FTEs in leadership and administration (to run the center), and 67 staff positions.

Of the latter, 59 have been designated as career positions and the
other eight as limited-term appointments, with Hull explaining that the shared service center is likely to need fewer employees as it gets up to speed — and the university does not want to put people in permanent positions, only to turn around a year later and subject those employees to layoff. However, there is a chance that some or all of those positions could become career positions.

Within the payroll organization, the staffing model shows a manager (one FTE), senior payroll processors (two FTEs), payroll processors (seven FTEs) and payroll service desk (one FTE) — a structure that prompted this question from the audience: Can seven individuals really process all the payroll for the administrative units?

Yes, Hull responded, without a doubt — considering that the center will have a well-trained staff using standardized processes, and a new time and attendance system.

Today, according to Hull, the university uses nine time and attendance systems, none of which feeds directly into the Payroll Personnel System, or PPS. Instead, payroll processors in each unit collect time and attendance data from employees and re-input this information into the PPS.

The new time and attendance system will feed directly into PPS, allowing a significant gain in organizational efficiency.

In addition, the shared service center will benefit immediately from a new case management system (to streamline and track requests for service, and measure performance) and a knowledge management system (for the sharing of consistent, reliable information, available to shared service center personnel and to the university as a whole, on a self-serve basis).

Andrew Dunn, newly hired as the shared service center’s first director, rejected the notion that the center will be “a dark call center.”

“Absolutely not,” he said.

He listed the key attributes of shared service center employees:

• Functional expertise
• Interest
• Service focus
• Team focus
• Willingness to drive the center’s mission

Lastly, he said, shared service center employees should be enthused about being ambassadors for the center.

“Join the team,” he said. “It’s going to be a great organization.”

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