Vol. 38, No. 18

3-4-2009
By: Adam King

USAC calls for greater educational benefits, career pathing

In the past when the University Staff Advisory Committee submitted its compensation and benefits report to the university leadership, the report ran more than 20 pages and covered every result from its survey to staff.

That left a lot of information for the president and his or her vice presidents to thumb through and put a lot of suggestions for action on the table at once.

This year’s Staff Compensation and Benefits Subcommittee (SCBS) did an about-face last week in its presentation to President Gordon Gee and Vice President for Human Resources Larry Lewellen, narrowing its focus to just two areas where the committee believed staff could benefit the most: Creating defined career paths and expanding OSU’s education benefits to other area colleges and universities.

“By focusing our recommendations this year, identifying areas that have been repeatedly raised by staff as important to them and aligning ourselves with the direction of the university, we feel really good about our approach,” said SCBS Co-Chair Mollie Carroll.

Gee expressed his admiration for this year’s report, not only for the content but for the focus as well.

“I really appreciate the strategic shift in the SCBS proposal,” he said. “Last year there were a lot of moving parts to it, and it was tough to get my hands around. And it’s just impossible to act on every suggestion at once.”

Currently OSU educational benefits only apply to Ohio State courses. But many employees’ schedules require taking night classes, and sometimes those employees can’t find a course at the time they are able to take it.

By expanding the education assistance benefit to places such as Columbus State, which offers online instruction, and creating reciprocal opportunities with other universities so programs that might not be at Ohio State can be accessed, a diverse OSU employee population would find their educational barriers removed, said SCBS Co-Chair Yvonne Dulaney.

And one of the surest ways for the university to become eminent, Carroll said, is to have defined career advancement. The SCBS noted in its report, however, that the 2008 Culture Survey initiated by Gee showed that only 30 percent of staff believed they had opportunities for advancement at OSU.

USAC suggested implementing an up-to-date, market-based classification system with clearly defined job families, the requirements within those families and career pathways. In addition, USAC asked for the creation of a Career Development Office to provide staff career support and assistance.

“When President Gee’s strategic goals and objectives were announced, several of them were based on issues that USAC has been asking for in previous reports for a number of years,” Dulaney said. “We decided to seize upon the opportunity to develop proposals on what we felt were the most critical issues facing staff that would directly tie in to his goals.”

Other institutions which OSU benchmarks itself against, including Michigan, Arizona, Texas, Washington and UCLA, have all instituted programs that encourage and detail career advancement for all levels of staff, the SCBS report noted, adding that it gave those institutions a competitive advantage in the hiring process.

But Gee said Ohio State has become the new benchmark in today’s economy because the majority of those institutions have had to take drastic measures just to survive. Arizona, he said, has instituted up to a weeklong unpaid furlough for its employees and Arizona State is furloughing up to three weeks. Washington (30 percent) and the Cal system (25 percent) are facing budget reductions, and Michigan’s will be cut dramatically too.

“I do not say this in a negative way,” Gee said. “I say this in a way that means we’re blessed by a governor and legislature that understands the value of higher education, and we must continue to earn those blessings by being the very best organization we can be. That means we have to rededicate ourselves to the life, future and opportunities that exist at this institution.”

Lewellen noted that increasing education benefits and developing career pathing could be an excellent part of the formula that builds Ohio State into a high-performance culture, to which Gee said he is absolutely committed.

“We want to create an environment in which our staff are not only an integrated part of the institution but they have a set of goals, criteria, expectations and opportunities,” Gee said.

“Vanderbilt this year was named to the list of the top 100 best places in America to work, and there had never been a university named to that list. I’m proud of that having been the chancellor there, but I’m disappointed because I wanted that to be Ohio State. So our new goal is to be the first public institution to make the list. So I want you to understand, I’m very solidly in USAC’s corner on the proposals it makes.”

For the complete SCBS report, visit usac.osu.edu.

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