Minutes for May15, 2018

Call to Order

Cara-Joy Wong,Chair, called the meeting to order at 9:07 a.m.

Attendance

Members Present:Carly Bloomingdale, Candice Bovian, Anthony Bridges, David Brown, Jassen Ceci, Tina Clonts, Jack Davis, Quinae Ford,Shane Gillooly, Ryan Lisk, Rudy Paratchek, Kyle Richardson, Jenny Sheppard, Johnny Stewart, Tonia Valeck, Cara-Joy Wong, Laura Pusateri

Members Absent:Brian Bonus, Wansley Dennis, Jonathan Hart

Agenda Items

  • Call to Order
  • Approval of the 4/17/18 Minutes
  • Office Hour Sign-ups
  • Facilities Picnic Sign-ups (Quinae)
  • Inform Series Debrief & Next Steps
  • Committee Reports
  • Attendance Bylaw Vote
  • Committee Member Attendance Bylaw Discussion
  • Council Member Substitution Discussion
  • Old/New Business
  • Reschedule June 19 meeting
  • Remind.com

Call to Order

  • Did not have a quorum yet to approve the minutes.
  • Cara-Joy reminded everyone to sign up for volunteer hours.
  • Quinae was not available to speak at this point, but Cara-Joy reported that facilities will provide ice-cream for the Facilities picnic in an effort to get people to come by the Staff Council table. The event is on June 22 at Couch Park (Leadership Course) from 11:30am – 2:30pm with setup at 10:30am.

Inform Series Debrief

Ryandebriefed the group on the Emergency Preparedness Inform Series. He stated that it went wellalthough there were a few problems with livestream buffering. Next time he’d like to have more planning time for the livestream testing. Once recording is edited, it will live on Staff Council’s website (Under News and Events/Inform GT Series).

There was a discussion on possibly doing it on Facebook Live in the future. Jassen chimed in that streaming could take away from bandwidth. Cara-Joy also brought up the fact that someone would have to also manage the social media comments.

Lessons learned from the event:

  • Because it was during lunchtime, there were quite a few emails/phone calls to find out if food or snacks were being served. If we have the budget, perhaps over coffee or other beverages which would be a nice way to incentivize people to attend. If not, be sure to advertise that it is a brown bag event.

No ideas for upcoming topics. Will look at getting ideas from staff with any topics.

Rudy chimed in that it was a really good turnout and really well received. His only complaint was that it ended on time. Ryan said that we didn’t start on time, but it did go for a full hour.

*We had quorum at this time. Rudy motioned that the minutes be approved. Ryan seconded.*

Committee Reports

Campus Physical Environment (CPE) – Kyle Richardson

  • Kyle is getting benchmarking started although he may have to do it himself.
  • Looking at doing a spin on the Hidden GT series, but from a staff angle – highlighting employees who are less visible, have different hours or unique titles. It would be a great way to highlight the staff.
  • There have been a lot of campus changes with traffic flow so Kyle took it upon himself to make those updates in the Waze app. He will bring this to the committee to see if they would like to be the central body to actually keep this up.
  • Cara-Joy suggested he get a feel from the group on who wants to work on what so he doesn’t have to do everything himself, e.g., a few members work on Hidden GT, a few work on benchmarking, a few work on the Waze project.

Compensation & Benefits (Comp & Ben) – Jack Davis

  • Jack is creating a GoogleDoc to capture all of the training programs they know about. The next goal would be to find out what would be beneficial and suggest future training programs.
  • Candice did a TAP/STRAP presentation at their last meeting. They would like to have a rep from the USG to do a presentation that discusses how the vendors are chosen for Perks at Work.
  • They will have LaTrese Ferguson, Manager of Workforce Learning and Professional Development, to come out and speak.
  • Candice will find out from BeNedra Williams who the Perks at Work contact is at the USG.
  • Cara-Joy asked if they considered doing a “career center” where someone could come out to discuss career pointers. This would work in tandem with the retention study.

Communications –Jenny Sheppard

  • Jenny will be meeting with Laura tomorrow to discuss what the communication committee should be working on – timelines, calendar, preparing for elections, benchmarking on Peer schools Staff Council websites.
  • Jenny said that what worked well with the Inform series from a communications standpoint was the advance notice given. There were 80 RSVPs. Turnout was great even though she received a lot of people that didn’t know where the building was.
  • Jenny wants to ensure that communications for Staff Council continue to go out in a timely manner.

Employee Engagement (EE) – Rudy Paratchek

  • The committee is working on the next meet and greet. Received the quotes from catering after the committee meeting so need to share with them.
  • It will be in the Piedmont Room on June 5 from 11:30am – 1:30pm.
  • Rudy is working on a letter. Will provide a write up to give to Kristen in Institute Communications to put in the Daily Digest. Laura and Jenny will assist with that.
  • The letter writing brigade has changed to become a recognition page for employees. Tonia is writing a prospectus on what that will look like
  • The remaining one-year gifts were distributed. Jenny will experiment using her personal email to see if we get more response from people picking up gifts. Cara-Joy suggested experimenting with the remainder of the fiscal year. Mail Chimp is helpful with analytics. We know that people are viewing/opening the email based on analytics.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

  • No report given

Staff Council Attendance Bylaw Vote

Cara-Joy provided the final write up for the Staff Council Attendance Bylaws. Note: this document only applies to the voted-in members of the staff council.

Feedback:

  • Laura suggested organizing so that people can reference line items easily, i.e., change the bullet points to a number or a letter.
  • Kyle said that the document formatting should be consistent.
  • The appeal for dismissal language seemed ambiguous. Does the person appealing get to choose who they are appealing to? Kyle said it is not explicit on who will make the final decision. Cara-Joy said it is not explicit because they get to choose. Laura suggested the language be changed to “Upon dismissal, each Staff Council member shall be allowed the opportunity to appeal at the member’s discretion to the executive leadership team or entire Staff Council.” (Changes in blue.)
  • Jack moved to accept the bylaws. Ryan seconded.

Committee Member Attendance Bylaw Discussion

  • Rudy had concerns about the Executive Leadership team intervening in committee member’s absences.
  • Tonia had concerns that each committee has a different meeting schedule and for those who have a meeting at the same day/time each month it sets someone up to fail if they can never make that meeting. Cara-Joy said that situation can’t really be avoided. The chair should discuss a situation like this with the committee member.
  • Laura said this may be a good opportunity to get buy-in from committee members and allow them to review the document and provide feedback.
  • Tonia asked if we could allow committee members, who cannot commit to their first choice, to select their second or third choice based on those committee meeting times.
  • Kyle said the document should really be used at the discretion of the chairs as a fallback document, not as an enforcer from the beginning.
  • Quinae stated that Rudy sends everyone on the Employee Engagement committee an expectations agreement at the beginning of the year. Tina said that would be good practice for all committees to follow.
  • Shane suggested that we state up front that this policy serves in absence of an official policy within a committee.
  • Cara-Joy said she will clean up the document taking in the suggestions and send to chairs to share with their committees. We will discuss as a council at the June meeting.

Council Member Substitution Discussion

Candice didn’t receive any suggestions from anyone to replace Marquis. Therefore, per the bylaws the Staff Council will present the next person up.

Next person in the same JCCS classification as Marquis is Michael Dean, a Carpenter in Area 5 Facilities. Jack and Ryan had really good feedback about him.

Laura suggested that we see who the next two people are so if Michael can’t participate then we will be ready to have someone else to immediately vote on. The next person after Michael Dean is Michael Williams, a Roofer in Utilities and Energy Area 5.

Cara-Joy requested a motion to reach out to Michael Dean and/or Michael Williams. The motion was approved.

Old/New Business

  • Cara-Joy will be at an event with the Provost’s office on June 19 and wanted to see if we could move the meeting the very next Tuesday, June 26. The majority of members are available so Candice will send a meeting invite with the new date and location.
  • Candice discussed Remind.com. It is a text messaging service that would work in tandem with email to notify members of meetings or events. No one was opposed to it so Candice will implement it using the cell phone numbers on record.
  • Steve Swant’s meeting was moved from May 18 to the first week in June.
  • Cara-Joy asked Quinae about the picnic and would one-hour increments work well for volunteers? Yes. Quinae asked Candice to handle the signups and she will ensure the tent and table are setup at 10:30. Facilities has an ice cream cooler and Staff Council will pass out drumsticks and popsicles.

Next Meeting

June 26, 2018 | 9:00 a.m. | Clough Commons, Room 469

Motion to adjourn was made at 10:42 a.m.

Page 1