Category: News

Categories
News

Following SMU’s Staff Recognition Initiative

In May, the Office of Operational Excellence launched the Staff Recognition Initiative to identify existing and potential outlets for creating a culture of honoring staff excellence and service. “Employee engagement is a critical component in successful organizations,” said Rebecca Sampson, Senior Employee Relations Specialist and project manager for the initiative, “and recognition is a crucial part of engagement.”

After a period of campus-wide investigation and assessment, the initiative team discovered that there is a desire and a need to develop a campus culture of recognition and appreciation as a core SMU value. Recognition is inconsistent across the schools and business units and many staff members feel undervalued.

To address these issues and ensure that employees see a connection between their work and the University’s vision, several programs will be implemented throughout the year.

This fall, the SMU Staff Association and Human Resources will revitalize the annual staff recognition and awards ceremony as the “Staff Celebration and Convocation.” President Turner will give a “state of the University” address, present the President’s Awards and Loretta Hawkins Award and recognize staff with 25+ years of service. Family members and supervisors of award recipients will also be invited.

The initiative team is also working to promote a culture of staff recognition and appreciation by:

  • Developing staff recognition training through Human Resources for managers to learn the impact, importance and return on investment of recognition and to understand how to effectively recognize employees.
  • Creating a centralized Staff Recognition Portal that will highlight past and present University award winners and 25+ Club members along with professional and personal staff accomplishments.
  • Establishing an annual “Staff Appreciation Week” to be held the week of the President’s Picnic with daily events and promotions that focus on staff.
  • Exploring changes to the Staff Service Awards to including new gift options and non-gift opportunities such as library donations in the name of a staff member.
  • Assigning an ongoing committee to continue to study, provide feedback, and monitor the needs and challenges related to staff recognition at SMU.

If you have ideas for promoting staff recognition and appreciation on campus, please send them to employeerelations@smu.edu.

Categories
News Staff Spotlight

SMU Staff Spotlight – Eric English

This summer, the Operational Excellence website is featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Read more SMU staff spotlights

Few departments at SMU have undergone more change in the past eight years than Facilities. Eric English’s career reflects that change.

English started working at SMU in 1996 as a painter. He was promoted to facilities building inspector in 2003 and then, in 2006, became environmental services manager, overseeing the custodial and sustainability departments. In 2010, a large portion of Facilities was outsourced to Aramark, and he became Aramark’s operational excellence and sustainability manager. Eighteen months later, he left to take a position as the building and grounds manager at Parkland Hospital. After five years away, he returned to SMU’s Facilities Department in April to become director of maintenance and grounds.

It’s a big job, encompassing landscaping, pools and fountains, fleet management, office moves, trash and recycling collection, sports turf, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, locksmiths, building maintenance repairs and more. English oversees more than 50 managers, supervisors and staff members as well as outsourced custodial and landscape personnel.

Four months into his new role, English says he has noticed a positive transformation in Facilities’ business model. “How we did business in the past is certainly different from how we do it today,” he says. “We are much more focused on customers – students, faculty and staff – to make sure they have the best possible educational/work environment.”

One significant change that English and his team have implemented in the past several months is expansion of maintenance coverage. “Whereas before we had two people who worked weekdays only, we now have four people and shifts that handle weekends as well,” he says. “We can now provide coverage seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to midnight every day. We can respond to most emergency requests much faster because staff is now on site instead of having to be called to come to campus. That’s particularly important for calls regarding leaks and flooding, which are actually our most common emergencies.”

English says one of the chief advantages of the new structure is the leadership. “I have great leaders to lean on, along with fellow peers,” he says.

With leadership support, English says he and his team are working to make improvements in a number of areas. “For example, we are focusing on reducing the number of call-backs, making sure the work is done right the first time,” he says. “We are also responding to work orders more quickly, and making sure we have clear communication with our customers so they understand the status of their work requests.”

The biggest challenge, he says, has been changing the mindset and culture of how tasks should be performed. “It is difficult to get people to change, especially when they have been doing things a certain way for a long time. However, I am encouraged with the way we are moving toward being more proactive and more productive.”

As an example, he says, his department is creating a strong preventive maintenance program. “We will be able to extend the life of equipment and reduce repair calls by setting up regularly scheduled maintenance checks on a variety of items,” he says. “It’s like taking your car in for scheduled service – do that and your car will run more efficiently and have fewer problems.”

As his department continues to evolve, English says he is setting a number of goals for himself and his team. “My immediate goals range from building a strong recycling program and improving our floor care program to teaching staff to be good stewards of University funds (which will allow us to reduce costs), streamlining processes and developing training programs for staff. All of these things will take time, but we are focused on making steady progress to keep improving our service.”

And he is happy to be at SMU once again. “I love the SMU community and the people here – it’s what brought me back,” he says. “SMU has a real family atmosphere. It’s why people stay so long, and, like me, want to return!”

Categories
News Staff Spotlight

SMU Staff Spotlight – Windy Epperson

This summer, the Operational Excellence website is featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Read more SMU staff spotlights

In the 11 years that Windy Epperson has been at SMU, she has worn several hats. With a background in accounting and purchasing at Baylor Medical Center, she joined the University in 2006 as a purchasing agent in Procurement, followed by a post as the procurement card (“p-card”) administrator. For the past three years, she has been changing the way the University pays its bills as the accounts payable manager.

“My team and I are responsible for timely and accurate payment of SMU bills, while also making sure the University remains in compliance with all regulatory requirements and that we abide by our own University policies when making those payments,” she says. Since taking on her managerial role, she has helped the department look for ways to process payments more efficiently within Shared Services. “We have also explored opportunities to reduce the time spent in preparing and processing the requests to create time savings for the schools and business units,” she says. “Some of the improvements implemented include the electronic submission of payment requests, eliminating scanning by attaching documentation within PeopleSoft, centralizing the receipt of invoices and using DocuSign to obtain electronic approvals. This has eliminated the need for a paper request for payment of an invoice and enabled us to process payments daily rather than twice per week.”

The efforts she makes with her team have paid off in a dramatic way. “Before the changes were implemented, the service level agreement (SLA) for processing payments was 10 days from receipt of the request in Accounts Payable,” she says. “We have reduced the SLA to 5 days.”

Epperson began her role in Accounts Payable (AP) before OE2C, but feels the campus-wide initiative brought new support from SMU leadership to make changes needed to increase efficiencies and customer satisfaction from both vendors and campus constituents. “The restructuring of the department to allow a dedicated AP specialist per school/area has helped that specialist become more familiar with activities for their assigned client and provide better service,” she says.

Her favorite part of the job is research. “Doing the research to resolve an issue for a vendor or internal customer and working toward a resolution that leaves them satisfied is very gratifying,” she says.

Of course, the transition has not been without challenges. “The process of implementing changes is not always smooth, as people are accustomed to doing things the ‘old’ way,” says Epperson. “We spent time explaining the changes to each department/area and detailing how the changes would result in getting vendors paid in a timely and accurate way while reducing time required to submit information for processing. Most feedback from internal customers about the changes has been positive, as they’ve seen the processing time reduced significantly.

“I really credit my accounts payable team for welcoming change and helping guide others on campus through it. They are smart, engaged and work hard to meet or exceed expectations. They are a big reason why our changes have been successful.”

Epperson’s success in cutting the AP processing time from 10 days to 5 days keeps her motivated to make further improvements. “During this fiscal year we plan to implement the upload of worksheets to create vouchers, which will eliminate the need for processors to key hundreds of payments from a worksheet,” she says. “This will result in timely payments and eliminate the possibility of keying errors. We also are looking at ways to take advantage of any available discounts and/or rebates with early payment or different payment methods.

“Our overall goal is to keep finding ways to make the entire bill paying process faster and easier for our vendors and our campus colleagues!”

Categories
News

Operational Excellence June-July News and Highlights

This summer, the Operational Excellence website is featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Employees highlighted in June and July include Melanie Bailey, Yvette Castilla and Vali Discus in Business and Finance, and Rachel Mulry, Teena Newman and Jason Warner in OIT.

Staff and faculty can now sign up for a new surplus office supply listserv, a cost-saving recycling measure implemented by the Repurposed Property Initiative team. Everyone who joins will receive periodic email notices of free surplus office supplies across campus in new or gently used condition, available on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants can also add their own surplus items to the list.

And, in response to a question about SMU’s policy on water purchases, guidelines were explained for buying bottled water and filtered water.

Featured News

Staff Spotlight – Melanie Bailey

Staff Spotlight – Yvette Castilla

Staff Spotlight – Vali Discus

Staff Spotlight – Rachel Mulry

Staff Spotlight – Teena Newman

Staff Spotlight – Jason Warner

Sign Up for Office Supply Listserv

FAQ

What is SMU’s policy on water purchases and is there a way to streamline our spending in this area?

 

Categories
News Staff Spotlight

SMU Staff Spotlight – Teena Newman

This summer, the Operational Excellence website is featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Read more SMU staff spotlights

At any given moment, SMU’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) has some 50 to 70 significant projects underway across campus, each one requiring 40 or more hours to complete, or involving multiple teams. However, until recently, no organized department existed to oversee those projects. That changed in September 2015 as part of the OE2C initiative when a new Project Management Office was created, led by director Teena Newman.

Newman established and now supports a project management framework based on industry best practices. She oversees the development, implementation and continuous improvement of OIT projects to align with SMU’s vision and strategy. She has also hired her first official project manager, and hopes to hire more.

Projects run the gamut from phone replacements to security upgrades, from website migrations to electronic catalog implementation. Previously, managing them fell to the technical staff and other OIT managers, on top of their other duties.

“Do you know 90 percent of what a project manager does? Communication!” says Newman. “Asking our technical staff who are busy creating and supporting solutions – our network engineers, PeopleSoft developers, database administrators, desktop support crew, etc. – to also effectively manage projects, is setting them up for failure. How can we expect them to spend 90 percent of their time in project communication?”

Under the new system, project requests are submitted through a Portfolio Project Management tool and are reviewed by the IT Leadership Team on a weekly basis, prioritized by a scoring system and then scheduled.

The new system offers distinct advantages, says Newman. “Almost all of SMU’s strategic initiatives have an IT component. Having a Project Management Office that reports directly to the CIO provides an unbiased approach to project selection. It creates checks and balances at the right level to enable an environment of accountability and visibility.”

Newman, who earned both B.B.A. (’01) and M.B.A. (’10) degrees from Cox, joined SMU in 2007 as a business analyst in OIT, after six years of working in the energy industry. She says her new role as director of project management brought a new perspective. “I spent my first few months in the role studying the OIT culture, and SMU’s culture,” she says. “Although I had been on staff at SMU for eight years, this leadership position meant new opportunities and challenges. I learned the importance of aligning my pace with that of the current culture. It’s crucial to find a balance between being too disruptive and being too stagnant.

“What guides me in making decisions is to ask myself daily, ‘Do my actions and decisions reflect SMU’s best long-term interest?’ If they do not, I either abandon or modify my approach.”

Newman says the University’s commitment to efficiency in new projects extends beyond her department. “In partnership with HR, OIT provided project management training to all OIT staff who either manage projects or serve as a key resource for projects,” says Newman. “The training has allowed our organization to speak a common language, and helps each person understand the importance of their role in projects. Mary Stall from HR provides an excellent course, Project Management Essentials for the Unofficial Project Manager. I highly recommend this course to all SMU staff and faculty, as it provides great tools to avoid project failure.”

Newman especially enjoys monitoring the progress OIT is making on campus projects and says, “Seeing us choose the right projects and delivering on expectations is one of my favorite parts of this role! If you would like to see what OIT is working on, you can now access this information on the OIT website.”