IP&O Insights Newsletter December 2023 issue
Dear Colleagues:
As we approach the end of the calendar year, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of IP&O employees for their patience during the transformation of the Employee Services department. This transformation began October 1, 2022.
We are starting 2024 with a new departmental leader at the helm: Sarah DiFrancesco, has been named Assistant Director of IP&O Employee Services. Sarah is poised to take Employee Services to the next level with a newly reorganized departmental structure. The new structure is supported by our new ServiceNow system.
In addition, we have reorganized Employee Services into two distinct focus areas, a Transactional Employee Lifecycle unit and a Strategic Organization Support unit.
Beverley Wilson now oversees our Transactional Employee Lifecycle unit. This group handles all transactional activities including, but not limited to, postings for Class 1, 3, 4, and 5 positions through the on-boarding of successful candidates, acting appointments, reappointments, transfers, retirements, terminations, etc.
Nyree Agbara now oversees our Strategic Organization Support unit. This group handles all inquiries related to writing or rewritings CARFs and job descriptions, recruitment and retention support, development of a CARF library, support to leadership who desire organizational structure improvements, and managing our separation exit interview process.
The development of this unit comes from a direct request revealed to us during our Pain Point conversations.
We have also added two staff members to the Employee Services Team to support our IP&O colleagues with their staffing needs. In addition, we now work with two UHR dedicated partners. One partner manages the headwaters of our transactions, and the other manages the on-boarding process. By having dedicated UHR partners, our UHR requests are prioritized, and Employee Services staff have clear and direct support for all UHR matters.
Streamlining and Communicating Across the Campuses
A year ago, the transactional employee lifecycle was different on each of the legacy RU Campuses: Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick. Today, we follow one RU Legacy process that is handled by our dedicated resources in UHR.
Employee Services and UHR have been meeting since last January 2022 to streamline the RBHS process, changing it to mirror the RU Legacy process. We have coined this the Ideal State. We hope to reach the Ideal State by the first quarter of the next year.
Employee Services has also established recurring meetings with our UHR OneSource partners as well as our RBHS-UHR partners. The overall goal is to enhance our communications to better serve the IP&O community.
Internally, Employee Services also meets regularly with our Payroll and Timekeeping team since every transactional activity has a payroll impact.
Since communication is key, this year we have included an Employee Services article in every issue of this newsletter to keep our IP&O colleagues informed of processes and procedures.
The Integration of ServiceNow
ServiceNow will revolutionize how our IP&O community communicates with one another and the university at large. Employee Services was part of the Phase 1 implementation and even though we have just launched, we have already identified changes that we will make to improve the end-user experience. ServiceNow allows the initiator of a case to track its process in real time. Dashboards and reports will be created and made available to IP&O decision makers.
We are excited about the accomplishments of Employee Services and look forward to an exciting year ahead. We anticipate realizing even greater efficiencies.
