HR Design plan coming in September

A plan to redesign the UW–Madison human resources system will be unveiled to campus next month.

Leaders of the HR Design project have been meeting throughout the summer with campus stakeholder groups, including governance and labor representatives. Taking into account feedback from those stakeholders, the project team is working to synthesize a plan from the dozens of recommendations offered in May and June by 11 work teams consisting of employees from across the campus.

The team’s plan, to be released in September, will propose specific direction on the recommendations from the work teams and suggest timing for implementation. Governance groups, other stakeholders and the project’s executive sponsors, Interim Chancellor David Ward, Provost Paul DeLuca and Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell, will review the plan again this fall. The campus community will also be invited to attend information sessions.

A finalized plan will be submitted in November to the UW System Board of Regents. Following approval from the regents, the plan will go before the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations next spring.

Information sessions on the proposal are being planned for late September and early October. New information about the project and recommendations can also be found in the updated FAQ section of the website.

Meanwhile, the UW System will release details of its new human resources proposal, called the University Personnel System, this week.

Though there will be some areas in which there is alignment between the two proposals, there will also be areas where the plans differ.

“We have been discussing with system the various areas where our personnel plans need to align, such as benefits and employee categories,” says Mark Walters, director of classified human resources at UW–Madison and a member of the project team for HR Design. “But the intent of the HR Design project is to provide UW–Madison with a system that addresses the unique needs of a world-class research and teaching institution, and there will be differences between system’s proposal and our plan.”

The HR Design project originated with a mandate in the 2011-13 state budget bill that UW–Madison create a personnel system separate from Wisconsin state government. Almost 200 members of the campus community were enlisted to serve on an advisory committee and work teams charged with developing recommendations to redesign the personnel system at the university.

UW-Madison work team recommendations resulted from hundreds of hours of research and discussion among the work teams that included a variety of engagement activities with campus employees. A total of nearly 7,000 members of the campus community participated in these activities.

“The extensive engagement process greatly informed the recommendations from the work teams, and continues to influence us as we finalize our plan,” says Bob Lavigna, UW–Madison director of human resources and leader of the HR Design project.