Less employee turnover, give the staff a reason to want to stay at Tarleton.

Transcription

1 3. How can Tarleton administration improve staff support? Text Response -- Stop treating us like second-class citizens. -- By paying them what they are worth. -- Actually do what they say, they will do, and not set you up, then backtrack with a valid reason or cause -- Better Pay, better raises - to state the most obvious. Ex) FMC pays 50% higher than Tarleton in staff positions. That clearly shows Tarleton does not evaluate the staff members equally. Less employee turnover, give the staff a reason to want to stay at Tarleton. Incentives for reaching goals. Bonuses for reaching goals. -- Identify where staff deserve promotion or reclassification based on merit and do it without their immediate supervisors having to jump through a thousand hoops to get it done. -- more money better comunication -- One thing that really would be helpful is a demand from administration that departments work together for the benefits of the students, that means going beyond what is in your job description. If someone needs help, help them. Direct students to the correct place and make sure they understand, make a little extra effort. If staff or faculty are rude or short with students, they don't enjoy college and it definitely will effect whether they want to attend this University or not. Staff education would be good so that people are trained, at least a little, about what departments do and where a student needs to go to receive the assistance they require. Sometimes staff are as much confused as the student about where to receive help. When people have knowledge they feel good about theirselves and believe in their abilities to help others. This is a win/win situation. This will cause staff morale to increase and ultimately provide better customer service. Need breakrooms with a sink and a place to a sit and eat if you do not want to go out. Need small informal group meetings to encourage communication with each other, in a fun way. -- Increased compensation is the big one. Addition staff to compensate for increased enrollments comes in a close second. -- Administration could talk to their employees. They should try to interact with the "lower level" or "tactical" staff. We are people. We might not make as much money as the VP's but we need to be encouraged and recognized for the work we do. I feel morale among staff is at an all time low and asministration needs to find a way to fix it! -- I feel that a top down initiative is needed to foster a better attitude from the Human Resources department. I personally do not get a feeling that the head of that department has the best interests of staff at heart. -- Equal pay across the board. Interesting how an academic admin assistant does not make as much as any other coordinator, but they handle a greater variety of work. -- Give more incentives for longevity and good serice.

2 -- TRAINING! Not just the basics which are given over and over, but advanced training. Training in Excel, budgets, CANOPY, FAMIS, and Duck Trax. I am advanced in most through my education but most I have noticed are not; helping those has become time consuming. -- Make everyone across the board a little more aware so that they can see the value that their team player or fellow associate, degreed or otherwise give/contribute in the way of team effort. I have been told that Administrative Assistants are the backbones of their departments, and we all know how brilliant some minds are on this campus faculty wise. But the fact still remains we all contribute to create a team, to work toward a common goal, and we all should be valued no matter what our social standing, or work related rank is on this campus and/or in life. It can be very sabitoging to anyone to be treated as though they are less and in a condescending fashion simply because they are not degreed, especially when there are many who give their 110% or more toward team effort and being the best that they can be. Also, make sure that people Faculty/Staff know that its not about pointing fingers, its about working together and realizing that we all contribute and we ALL make mistakes!! It should not be about pointing fingers, it should be about working as a team in our TSU family to better our mission and its about stumbling at times, (to err is human, to forgive divine!) and then getting back up on your feet and continuing to place value and work toward a common good/goal!!! Lets do a little less picking each other appart and a little more uplifting and praise. See and seek the value, and most of all recognize the good don't fixate on the bad and pick each other appart!! Negative environments do not benefit, they harm! -- The staff often feels like they are not respected or listened to, or that they are looked down on because they do not have advanced degrees. The administration could improve staff support by asking the staff's opinions on issues that effect them and actually listening to the answers. -- Training and increased scholarships. Also, the possiblity of student loan repayment for degrees earned while working for Tarleton. -- No major problem with staff support. -- The culture at Tarleton is terrible. There is a lack of trust for staff members. There is a "playing favorite" game that is PERVASIVE in everything happening and it is a negative force on the students. Students are not provided the highest possible level of services and programs because someone's "friend" had to be promoted to a higher position so the person who is the best for the position is not given an opportunity. There is an elite mentality where only the white males in leadership can make a decision and everyone else is disregarded. Administration is drastically out of touch with "the people" and seem to be quite happy with the separation.

3 -- Sincere evaluation and adjustment of staff salary ranges would be a great start. Start demonstrating that staff has value, albeit different than the value faculty have. It is true that we would not have a university without the faculty. It is also true that the university cannot run without the support staff. It would be nice if there was an honest acknowledgement of the staff's value. Evaluate staffing levels. We have added additional faculty to support the increased student load; which is absolutely needed. But in very few cases have we increased the level of staff employees even though the administrative load has increased as a result of more students and more bureaucratic requirements. -- Increase staff when a department or facilities grow rather than no replacing those that retire. -- Increase the poor pay. -- I would like to evaluate how other universities such as Texas State University utilze extended holiday time off by allowing their employees to earn Energy Conservation days which allow them the entire week of Spring Break off. By losing Labor Day and reducing to one day at Spring Break, it seems that morale has diminished. There have been many very good long term Tarleton employees that have left to work for other universities that offer better pay, more time off, and educational incentives such as paying to earn Master's or Phd for similar positions. -- Implement staff support programs that distinctly separate Tarleton from A&M System. Increase tuition benefits for staff. Provide an exceptional level of wellness benefits including no cost recreational access. Create a compensation program that benefits staff who exhibit exceptional expertise and service. Ensure at the highest levels of divisional leadership that there are examples of fairness and equal treatment. -- incentivize educational attainment -- I think everyone cares about salary, benefits, and working conditions. Knowing that administration cares enough to seek out our input and show an interest in our area of work in the university is significant. Having an administrator do more than send out an , but actually showing in person that my work is appreciated and that improving salary, benefits, and working conditions is important to administration through action goes a long way to help morale. We have many areas at Tarleton who work on a shoe string budget. It speaks volumes for adminstration to recognize that and make efforts to budgetarily make changes that improve a program's opportunity to excel. -- Perhaps a better training program. Coming in I learned a lot of things on the go such as recording trip mileage, how to bring in recruits and other things similar to these. -- By not out-sourcing and scaring people about there jobs. If enough people at Tarleton say no to outsourcing all of Tarleton would benefit. Many things change on this campus because people say Yes or No to certain issues. -- I don't see any areas of improvement at this time.

4 -- Here's what people don't need: the political response. Claiming to be more transparent with decisions, but not actually acting on it, doesn't help the situation. We don't need a page out on the website that claims to communicate to us if it doesn't get updated with the information we should be learning about our University and changes we will be experiencing. We don't need to be invited to a forum where we talk about what the issues are, and then find out nothing is going to be done about them (just recently, the staff were listened to during a Q&A forum, so thanks for the small change). We don't need lies. If someone made a mistake, they can admit to it. Tarleton is family - we don't throw people under buses for telling us the truth. Mistakes happen, we move on together. -- No improvement is needed in some departments. In others, see 1 and 2 above. There is a distinct possibility that the above referenced attitudes are not always conscious. An occasional reminder from upper administration might work wonders. -- The Academic Departments still have only one Administrative Assistant to do everything (budget, travel, receptionist, meeting planning, etc.) Budgets usually only allow for one student worker. Registrar's Office, Business Services, Human Resources, etc. keep adding employees with each one doing just one job. And don't say it is because they are so over worked with more students, faculty, etc. The Academic Departments have more students, faculty, etc. If an Adminsitrative Assistant is out in one academic department, we code phones, do mail and give support to their faculty but if someone is out in the areas mentioned above nothing gets done until that person returns. Departmental Administrative Assistants are miracle workers with multi-tasking. These other areas need to learn how. It is time for more Administrative Support in the Academic Departments. -- If new online programs and policies were communicated with complete knowledge and outcome prior to training and implementation, it would save a lot of valuable time spent by staff learning something new that seems to change again in a matter of weeks. This adds a lot of undo stress, since staff already have so many responsibilities -- Honestly look having staff do more with less. Being apart of multiple committees is great, but when committee work interferes with regular-job-work, it becomes difficult. Also, administration needs to encourage work-life balance. Yes, my career is a career and I intend to have it for life, but I am also a parent, spouse, etc for life as well. Increased mandatory evening activites and weekends are not condusive to a good work-life balance. There are times, when these off hours are needed, but not at the expense of flexing the time off. -- I don't know. Continue to offer genuine respect for their positions. Considering the starting salaries for new hires, combined with the volume of information and required skills for important tasks that very few currently on campus possess, I might propose that department/division heads and deans have a quiet account they could draw from at times to show appreciation for what they do. It's much more efficient to show appreciation with a simple gesture than pull a secretary or staff member from another area to train a new person. -- Stop taking away our holidays. Give us back Labor Day and do away with the day off during spring break. This is another example of a faculty benefit that staff do not get. If there are no classes, then faculty do not have to come to work. However, staff do. Since students did not have class on Labor Day, faculty did not have to work. The same is true for the week of spring break.

5 -- Staff personnel are here on campus working when most faculty have already left campus at the end of a semester. Continuing to provide a suprise afternoon off by closing campus before a holiday helps moral and shows that administration do recognize staff efforts and responsbilities once most faculty are off for the holiday. Addition of more staff is needed in serveral areas. As additional faculty, additional facilities etc. have come on board with the University's growth, more support staff is needed to support the iniatives and faculty of the University in order for the University to run effectively and efficiently. Staff are being asked to do more, be more accountable and many times are working themselves too much just to get the job done. -- Via salary increases. -- Don't make changes just for change sake. -- salary increases -- Currently, I do not see a problem that needs to be improved upon. -- By figuring out the best manner in which to deal with their employees. They want to feel they are part of the team working toward the same goal. They want to feel their contribution is valued, and their membership on the team is valued as well, and their sacrifices. Should an employee feel that their only value to their employer is how much they are able to carry, like a pack animal, that beast of burden will forge no commitment or loyalty to that master. -- More money and more vacation. Training in the ever evolving software and technology that comes our way. Love the Staff Development Day. -- Be open, honest and inclusive. When appropriate give opportunity to feedback and truly listen to that feedback. -- supplying adequate support staff and listening -- i think it can improve by giving us more days off. Conservation days during the summer; in the time that I have worked at Tarleton we have always had three days during Spring break and including federal holidays. For some reason our days keep getting shortened this year and it's very frustrating. Labor day is a huge deal for some who can't find child care during that time; like me. It's more likely my babysitter will be working during spring break then not taking off on Labor day. -- Keeping the lines of communication open and allowing us some imput on topics that affect the staff. -- We do need more communication between the two groups. -- Picture and promote the image and reality of the staff's contribution to the ongoing accomplishment and implementation of our transcending culture of improvement, success, and pride in what can be set as the Tarleton tradition of excellence as it intersects the everchanging context of our influence and impact in the rest of the world. Statistic Value 48 Total Responses 48