Congratulations IPS Award Winners

Congratulations to all the award winners at last week's annual conference. We will publish a complete list of the winners in a few weeks, but I wanted to draw particular attend to the Ballard Award winner Donna Bridges and the Hutchison Award winner Chuck Beasley. Both are exceptional employees and very deserving of the award and the $1500 check!



The Project of the Year team from CTAS and the VP Citation team from CIS also produced spectacular results this year.

Congratulations to all!

What Corporate America is Reading

May 22 the Knoxville News Sentinel published an article on the top books executives in corporate America are reading. Although all the lessons might not be immediately applicable to our work, there are lessons to be learned. Here's the Top Ten List:

1. For the Jungle to the Boardroom - leadership lessons from a Vietnam Veteran who has also run a nonprofit

2. Unfair Advantage: the power of financial education

3. From Values to Action: the four principles of values-based leadership - leaders who in "do the right thing," deliver outstanding and lasting results

4. Today We are Rich: harnessing the power of total confidence

5. How to Market to People Not Like You: "know it or blow it' rules for reaching diverse customers

6. Mojo: how to get it, how to keep it, how to get it back if you lose it

7. Content Rules: how to create killer blogs, podcasts, videos, ebooks, webinars (and more) that engage customers and ignite your business

8. Relationship Economics: transform your most valuable business contacts into personal and professional success

9. Pre-Commerce: how companies and customers are transforming business together

10. The First 90 Days: critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels - I send an article based on this book to every new member of the IPS leadership team.

It is also worth noting that number 15 is Strengths Finder a book that the leadership academy participants read and number 19 is It's Your Ship, a book that the IPS leadership team read a few years ago.

Are you keeping current in your field?

Talent Management

Recently I received an article from Taleo, a talent management company. The university is currently implementing the commpany's on-line recruitment software. Taleo provided "10 Talent Management Best Practices for 2011."

1. Move recruiting on-line
2. Source smarter (posting openings)
3. Extend your reach with social recruiting
4. Get employees up to speed faster
5. Align goals and objectives across your organization
6. Transform performance reviews
7. Implement ongoing learning
8. Gain insight into your workforce
9. Create a pay-for-performance culture
10. Build a leadership pipeline.

We are already working on a number of these items across the institute;however, we have room to improve. Addressing each of them will continue to help us move toward our goal of being The Employer of Choice in public service.

Baldrige Criteria

The Leadership Academy teams are writing Organizational Profiles for each of our agencies. This is an opportunity for us to document, in a very high-level way, our current organizational description and organizational position. A team of external reviewers will meet with each agency for a half-day to discuss our reports. I look forward to using this process to improve our aready outstanding organization.

In order to stay current on the latest Baldrige thinking, I subscribe to the Baldrige Blog site. A recent post by Harry Hertz helps explain the link between questions in the application and the evaluators point of view. I thought it might be helpful to share.



Meet the Twins 06/27/2011
Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

What twins is he talking about, you ask. The twins that are in the Criteria for Performance Excellence. The twins that have been the subject of recent discussion on our LinkedIn improvement thread. I am referring to the Baldrige Scoring Guidelines twins: ADLI and LeTCI. They are fraternal, non-identical twins, but like most twins are kindred spirits since their birth and closely linked in all they do. As most people around Baldrige know ADLI: approach, deployment, learning, and integration are the scoring dimensions for process-related items in the Criteria and LeTCI: levels, trends, comparisons, and integration are the scoring dimensions for results items. The maturity of an organization is determined by their maturity in each of these dimensions, on a Criteria item by item basis. The Scoring Guidelines, on pages 65 through 70 of the Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet, describe the maturity against each dimension at each increasing scoring range. You also notice that integration is in both process and results scoring dimensions. Integration is the primary tie that binds our twins to each other. A key piece of integration is whether the results we measure reflect results for our key organizational processes and if those results drive decision-making on strategy, need for innovation, and process improvements.

So, what does this all have to do with the improvement thread on LinkedIn? The comment that several people made is that examiners rely on the Scoring Guidelines for judging maturity, but Criteria users frequently rely solely on the Criteria requirements and do not take advantage of the Scoring Guidelines as a mechanism for both gauging improvement and maturity and for guidance in understanding how to reach that next level of maturity. Together the Criteria and the Scoring Guidelines form the full systems perspective for guiding and sustaining an organization. I liken the Criteria and Scoring Guidelines to the younger sibling and the older twins. The young sibling learns the criteria that are important to being part of the system (the family) and the older, wiser twins have learned how to succeed or fail in the family by growing and maturing to become increasingly valuable members of the family and sustain the family.

I hope this brief analogy helps organizations appreciate the richness of the combination of Criteria and Scoring Guidelines to guide progress and sustainability. This has been a rather different blog post than my usual. I would like to hear your reactions. And how does your organizational family measure up

"Brown Bag" Meetings

This week I visited with staff across the state in what I called "Brown Bag" meetings. Apparently I need a new name because the guys in West TN informed me that brown bag means something entirely different in their part of the state - more closely related to liquid refreshments than food!

At any rate, I appreciate 66 of you turning out for our gatherings, some with brown bags and some simply to listen. Either way, it worked. I thought I would share with you the recurring themes I heard across the state.

Budget - we talked briefly about the budget in some of the meetings. As I said in my earlier email, we are generally in good shape for this year, and the coming years, assuming the economy continues to recover and federal funds remain stable.

Procurement cards - we talked about the need to use these cards for caterers and training events. Gail White is working with the Treasurer's office on this issue. Currently these items are classified as entertainment and blocked from procurement cards.

Transportation - we talked about the state contract with the commuter rail and metro bus for free transportation for state employees. We will check to see if there is a way to include UT employees in this contract.

Inclement weather closing policy - The UT HR office revised the policy this year and tied all Nashville offices to the state closing schedule. We will get clarification on how this information is communicated.

Mileage reimbursement rates - we discussed why the rate has not changed. The UT rate is tied to the state rate, so I am asking Gail White to determine how often the state reviews the rate.

Travel reimbursement policies - we had a lot of discussion about travel! Click here if you want to read the official UT travel policy. Bottom line, we must follow official UT policy and should avoid making up CLRs (no explanation needed) that make more work or simply is for someone's convenience. I'm asking Gail White to determine how IPS might go about getting site licenses for those employees who travel regularly to enter their own travel directly into IRIS. This will require training on the part of the travelers. More to come on this topic.

Purchasing procedure - we also discussed purchasing guidelines. They can be found here. Bottom line, if you are in travel status (not local miles) purchases can be filed with your travel, but if you are not in travel staus and driving locally, purchases must be filed on a petty cash reimbursement.

Salary increases - everyone seems to understand how increases are being distributed based on my earlier email. Letters should be in the mail before the end of July.

HR128 credit - everyone understands the need to track our training hours. Judie Martin will check to see if we can enter our own information into IRIS.

APR process - we have room for improvement in both employees understanding the process and supervisors conducting a good review. We will plan to schedule additional training this coming fall and winter.

I enjoyed our conversations and encourage you to ask a member of your management team about any specific agency question you might have that I could not answer.

Thanks!
Mary

Planned Savings

UT has an easy way to adjust the direct deposit of your pay and travel reimbursements. Just complete the e-form at this link and send it to the payroll office.


You will note on the form that you can have your entire pay deposited in up to two different accounts (one a fixed amount and one the balance of your check). So, every time salary increases roll around (ok - I realize it isn't that often!), I realize I have somehow managed on my current pay, so I put at least a portion of the increase into "forced" savings through payroll direct deposit.

The other nice feature about direct deposit is you can have an entirely separate account for travel reimbursement, if you are tracking those expenses separately.

Personal finances can be simple or complex depending on how you approach them, but at least we have one tool available to help in our planning.

New Compensation Philosophy

I am representing IPS on the system-wide Compensation Advisory Board. One of our first tasks was to update the university's compensation philosophy statement. We studied the statements of several universities and Fortune 500 companies. We crafted a new statement for UT that was reviewed by a wide range of individuals across the university and ultimately approved by the President's Staff.


The new statement is published on the UT HR web site and copied below:

Compensation Philosophy

As a higher education system charged with serving the citizens of Tennessee, we recognize our faculty and staff as our most critical asset and our principle source of excellence. In order to achieve our mission of teaching, research and service, we must attract, retain and reward a highly qualified workforce. We achieve this objective by providing a total compensation package including base pay, benefits, personal and professional development, and the intrinsic values of working in an education environment. Our three guiding principles are:

The University's goal is to provide total compensation that is competitive within the relevant labor markets in which we compete to attract highly skilled and competent faculty and staff.

The University recognizes skills, experience and performance of faculty and staff and seeks to retain and develop employees by providing opportunities for learning, growth and career development.

The University's policies and practices are consistent with equal opportunity principles and applicable laws.

We recognize that there are many talents and contributions necessary to support the University of Tennessee. Compensation policies and procedures will support the university's strategic direction over the long term.

Customers Recognized

At the recent Tennessee Municipal League meeting Livingston Mayor Curtis Hayes, a member of the MTAS advisory committee, was name 2011 Mayor of the Year!

Patty McDonald, spouse of Bartlet Mayor Keith McDonald who also serves on the MTAS advisory committee, was named Spouse of the Year!

Jody Balz, Tullahoma, was named City Manager of the Year.

Congratulations to these outstanding individuals and many thanks to them for their continuing support of IPS.