Members Attending:
Dale Moore (Chair), Ron Boaz, Sara Clark, Jana Estergard, LaDonna Hansen, Barbara Turpin, Michelle Visio, Sue Alvers (Secretary), Dr. Michael Nietzel
Meeting started at 3:00 p.m. Dale Moore welcomed and thanked everyone for agreeing to serve on the Committee. Introductions were made.
Dr. Nietzel explained the charge/goals of the committee.
- Identify key issues that affect the relationship between a productive work environment and a satisfying personal life.
- Make recommendations that will balance personal life and work life by evaluating initiatives and evaluating what is possible at Missouri State University.
- Assess the budgeting impacts of each initiative. Some are costly and some are not. Give a ballpark figure
- Take up to a couple years if necessary. Suggest doing a short survey.
- Will take feasible recommendations to the Administrative Council and Board of Governors.
- Committee can do rolling time-table for recommendations. Recommending easy initiatives first, then do the harder ones later.
Committee Reaction:
- LaDonna’s been in contact with Dr. Laura Koppes, the Director of University of Kentucky’s Office of Work-Life.
- One of the themes from NACUBO, APPA & SCUP conference in Hawaii is to look at extending the tenure process.
- Many universities looking into part-time faculty tenure
- Split tenure
- Longer time for tenure
- Make sure Provost is involved when discussing tenure
- Purpose is to recruit and retain good faculty.
Initial Steps:
- Dale suggests that committee work on formulation of mission statement first.
- Need to define lines – is wellness a component of work/life?
- Prioritize items – try to corral as many of hot button issues in some type of order.
- Work/life issues should work for both faculty and staff.
- Flextime
- Elder Care
- Day Care/Child Care
- Telecommuting
- Trailing Partner hiring
- Research best practices at other universities. Suggest starting with higher education first, then maybe private sector/industry standards.
- Staff at Missouri State basically younger than faculty.
- Jana suggests the need to get things pulled together within a year to help with recruitment/retainment.
- Mothers & fathers able to work .75 FTE instead of fulltime
- Job sharing with partial benefits
- Living wage for staff
- Already informal processes in departments, i.e. flextime
- Dale mentions get consulting firm that does surveys. Surveys should be professionally done for credibility.
- Sara wondered who Kentucky patterned their program after.
- Look at our Benchmark Peers for possible work/life programming
Communication:
- Website up. Link on President’s page under “Committees”. www.missouristate.edu/worklife
- Sara to get special email address - worklife@missouristate.edu
- Will post minutes
- Present at Faculty Senate and Staff Senate. Remember second and third shift employees.
Critical Resources:
- Michelle contacting former students who are working as consultants.
- Industry: Fed Ex, Sodexho, FirstOne, HR Directors
- Jana to pull Missouri State University demographic data.
- Look at exit questionnaires
- Fact Book data
Reminder: Work/life for Hispanics and African/American employees is different from Caucasian employees.
Next meeting:
Next meeting:
- Meet every two weeks?
- Think about mission statement and goals. Hope to have it formulated in two weeks
- Review handout reading materials
- Jana to query demographics
- Michelle to check faculty moral survey results for work/life issues
- Sara and LaDonna to contact Benchmark Peers
- Meeting date and time to be decided later