Operational Excellence Listening Tour

The New Brunswick HR Council includes approximately 20 senior-level personnel at Rutgers¬–New Brunswick’s schools and Cabinet-level departments. Beginning February 2023, they meet biweekly with Senior Vice President Fernández and her senior staff to discuss ongoing concerns, existing UHR policies and practices, and proposed solutions.

Senior Vice President Fernández noted that, with their deep institutional knowledge, the members of the New Brunswick HR Council are poised to help UHR find creative interim and long-term answers to current and future challenges.

OneSource was created in 2019 to better serve individual employee needs by creating a single point of contact and true ownership, resolution, and accountability for high volume, duplicative, and redundant activities, as well as to establish uniform messaging, standardize processes, consolidate fragmented services to drive economies of scale, improve communication, mitigate institution risk, and have systems of measure to assess success and inform improvements.  

During OneSource’s inaugural “calibration” year, the pandemic hit. Challenges such as the unprecedented need for information and support across the university, university and federal leave entitlements, mass employment actions, and furlough programs, among others, strained OneSource beyond its staffing, operational, and functional design and capacity. Additionally, OneSource was not spared the fallout of the Great Resignation.  Senior Vice President Fernández credits OneSource for UHR’s ability to support the university in ways that would not otherwise have been possible.  However, the prolonged and sustained demands on OneSource almost immediately created a crisis rather than a service center model.  Senior Vice President Fernández noted that, with the return to a steadier state, it is time to reassess and reset OneSource.

To this end, Senior Vice President Fernández announced that UHR is conducting a reassessment and reset of OneSource. The reassessment began in August 2022 with the hiring of the current OneSource director who has already taken significant measures to enhance OneSource service delivery including an overhaul of training and protocols to address the volume of calls and timely and accurate case resolution. University Human Resources will work with the New Brunswick HR Council to identify additional ways to improve OneSource and address employee expectations. As the OneSource team begins to realize the benefits of streamlined, automated, and improved processes and training, the next step is to continue to streamline processes, simplify policies and communications, utilize data and customer feedback to inform continuous process improvement efforts and to establish key performance indicators, to maintain high performance on an ongoing basis.

Several attendees of the January 30 Operational Excellence Listening Tour event noted that it can be difficult to track the progress of hiring approvals, promotions, internal transfers, or other HR transactions. Senior Vice President Fernández noted that UHR is developing a case management system that will be partially deployed by the end of the current fiscal year. Internally, the new system will enable UHR to better manage caseloads by reassigning cases if individuals are overburdened. Externally, the system will allow departmental HR personnel to know the status of each individual transaction—and to identify whether there are issues that should be resolved with changes to policies, procedures, training, or communication.

To promote greater institutional clarity, UHR has appointed a policy committee that will seek to simplify the university’s human resources policies by rendering them in plain language, clearly stating requirements and responsibilities, and clarifying areas that may be changed as opposed to those established through federal law, state law, or negotiated contracts.

One factor that contributes to the delay of HR personnel transactions is a loss of institutional knowledge among department-level human resources personnel as well as internal UHR personnel, and the absence of standardized training  and protocols. There is no uniformity in the training, background, experience or roles of HR liaisons across the university. Some Rutgers­–New Brunswick departmental HR liaisons may not have the core HR background or experience necessary to evaluate HR assessments and transactions to ensure expedited processing of certain transactions. The combination of staff turnover, need for training, need to update and simplify processes and procedures, and staffing shortages all contribute to the challenges we have around the processing of transactions. To address this issue, UHR is developing clear and comprehensive information packages and training resources which will be available by Fall 2023.

University Human Resources is in the process of revamping its website. It will take staff suggestions under consideration, including requests for keyword search functions and an improved FAQ section which would include the top questions received by OneSource. The new website will launch before the beginning of the Fall 2023 semester.

Several audience members asked whether the university will establish a practice for recognizing extraordinary employee contributions. Senior Vice President Fernández noted that the Future of Work Task Force has established a committee to develop a universitywide, presidential employee excellence recognition program. The committee began its work in February and will identify model programs across peer institutions. Additional details regarding the recognition categories, eligibility criteria, and nomination submission process will be announced in September.

The Chancellor-Provost Office shared with University Human Resources the full list of questions and comments that audience members submitted before and during the February 2023 event, including requests for clearer lines of communication between UHR and the Rutgers–New Brunswick departments, and suggestions for clarifications or changes of human resources policies and procedures. The Chancellor-Provost Office will follow up with UHR on all of the topics listed here and will provide updates to the campus community.

Rutgers–New Brunswick departments regularly place work-orders with IP&O for repairs, leaks, temperature and comfort issues, potholes, and other concerns, and audience members asked for the creation of a dashboard to help track the status of work-order completion. Executive Vice President Calcado noted that IP&O is migrating to the ServiceNow platform, currently used by University Human Resources and the Office of Information Technology to provide clear and updated information about work-orders and other services. Given the size of IP&O’s operations, the migration to ServiceNow is expected to be complete by the end of 2024. IP&O will also continue the lines of communication that currently exist through each facility’s building coordinator.

Rutgers–New Brunswick’s implementation of its Academic Master Plan includes a commitment by the Chancellor-Provost to invest $5 million over the next five years in infrastructure repairs and upgrades, with an emphasis on collaborative and innovative student-facing spaces. This initiative is still in its early stages, and Chancellor-Provost Office will provide further information to the campus community as it become available.

Additionally, Executive Vice President Calcado noted that IP&O is developing a plan to revitalize the Douglass campus to create a vibrant hub at the heart of Douglass. This issue, too, is in its preliminary phases, and more detail will be forthcoming.

IP&O maintains a network of building coordinators responsible for coordinating with the occupants of their assigned buildings. Employees should report any issues by calling 848-445-1234 or by visiting the IP&O University Facilities Service Call Center website and submitting a maintenance request form. Building coordinators are typically kept informed of progress on calls and will advise the building occupants.

Executive Vice President Calcado provided an update on the Rutgers Climate Action Plan and the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2040 and carbon-negative—removing more greenhouse gases than the university puts into the atmosphere—by Rutgers’ 275th anniversary in 2041.

He noted that, to meet these priorities, the university no longer intends to establish a new fossil fuel heating plant as had been called for in the Rutgers 2030 Physical Master Plan that had been approved in 2013. Due to advancements in technology and a renewed commitment to sustainability, the university instead is developing a plan to electrify the heating and cooling needs of the College Avenue Campus.

IP&O is also signing on to the White House’s EV Acceleration Challenge and is committing to replacing 150 of its service vehicles with electronic vehicles by 2030, and installing 320 Level 2 electronic vehicle charging stations by 2028.

The Chancellor-Provost Office shared with IP&O the full list of questions and comments that audience members submitted before and during the February 2023 event, and will follow up with Executive Vice President Calcado to update the campus community.