President’s Message: Continuing to Build Our Culture and Community
As we promised earlier in the year, I am writing to provide an update on the ongoing activities taking place across the University in response to the 2018 Feedback Survey.
Since the survey, our community has drawn together and thoughtfully considered ways by which we can improve our community. Some of those include:
- Communicating the results of the survey to a wider audience, providing as much detail to as many people as possible,
- Tasking University leaders with ensuring that survey results are shared within every college and administrative division,
- Asking vice presidents and deans to work within their areas over the summer and early fall to develop action plans in response to the 2018 Feedback Survey. Since many faculty are not on campus during the summer, the deans asked to have extra time this fall to complete their plans,
- Coming together in groups of faculty and staff — like the grass-roots working group — who are working together to generate ideas on how we can improve our culture, and
- Putting on events like the summer food trucks, the inaugural staff day of service, and the John O’Leary talk.
All of these efforts represent the level of engagement necessary to build the culture that is worthy of the outstanding people at SLU.
Action Plan Progress Reports and Sharing
Now that action plans for each division and college have been developed, we will track progress made on achieving the action plan goals. I will receive regular updates on progress made by each unit. I have also instructed University Vice Presidents and Deans to share their action plans with each of you.
Work Design Meetings - Empowering Our People to Improve Our Operations and Streamline our Work
Our results indicated that operational effectiveness and change management are two primary areas upon which we must focus. The leadership team worked with Human Resources to develop a plan that has supervisors engaged in conversations with their teams. This engagement should solicit suggestions from the ground up that are designed to alleviate some of the stress and overload that has been felt. If successful this will allow individuals to better focus on the work that most directly serves our mission.
We will track the ideas that come from these meetings. All ideas for how we redesign the work will be considered and we will implement the best ideas that emerge.
I am encouraged that so many divisions have already had these conversations and have felt positive outcomes. We need more of this.
Best wishes,
Fred P. Pestello, Ph.D., President