Family, work topics of staff conversation

Almost 200 staff members accepted the invitation to a free lunch and the chance to speak their minds last week when the first of a series of discussions sponsored by the President’s Staff Forum was held in Kane Hall. Centered on the topic of the family and the workplace, the discussion was facilitated by Randi Shapiro, the coordinator of Work/Family Services in Human Resources.

“We were expecting about 30 or 40 of you,” Shapiro told the crowd in the substitute room that had to be booked after the original location turned out to be too small. “But we’re delighted to have such a good turnout.”

The bulk of the meeting consisted of staff members coming to microphones placed on either side of the room and speaking up about issues that concerned them. But before that process began, Management Professor Tom Lee, who studies organizational issues involving work satisfaction, loyalty and employee retention, made some introductory remarks.

When it comes to loyalty and retention, Lee told attending staff members, he has found that you can buy people, but only temporarily. “If you give an employee extra money, their satisfaction lasts only a short time,” he said. “People recalibrate their expected values.”

Of course money counts, but beyond that, there are two other things that come into play, according to Lee. One is emotion - or the degree to which employees feel they “fit” in their work environment. The other is something he called “embeddedness links,” which could be defined as having ties to their current world or could be thought of as being stuck, depending on how the employee feels about it. “Together, we call these ideas job embeddedness,” Lee said.

Despite these remarks, many of the comments made by staff did involve money. Although some made the point that staff salaries are below market, there was more talk about how some benefits provided at the University are out of reach for many staff. Several people commented that the on-site child-care centers serve a relatively small number of people and are too expensive compared to outside centers. One said the child-care centers should operate with a sliding scale fee.

Staff were similarly unhappy with the price of the summer children’s programs sponsored by Educational Outreach. One said he was responsible for helping to run the summer program but could not afford to send his children there.

But complaints were not the only order of the day. Staff had suggestions as well. One wondered if the University could help with after school child-care by sponsoring youth organizations such as math or chess clubs. Another suggested the University supply space for an after school program run by a parent cooperative. A third wanted to know if teenagers could be included somehow. “One of the reasons I thought it would be good to work here was so that my kids could come and see the campus,” she said. “But that’s all they can do now, is look.”

Another speaker pointed out that there must be a great deal of expertise on the child-care issue among people on campus, and wondered if this expertise could be drawn on in formulating University actions in this area.

A number of staff mentioned their pleasure with the new telework policy, but many felt that supervisors were not sufficiently educated about it or open to it. Others made a similar complaint with respect to other flexible options, such as job sharing and working unusual hours. One person wondered why technology couldn’t be used in other ways to make employee’s lives easier. “For example, why couldn’t there be an announcement via computer when some incident on or near campus has an impact on traffic and buses?” she asked.

Among the other ideas brought up were: