November 2018
Greetings,
Since joining TU almost a year ago, I have had many candid discussions with faculty,
staff and key decision makers about the services and support the Office of Human Resources
(OHR) provides to the campus, how we can improve our services and support and how
we can deliver them with more insight and efficiency.
As a result of those discussions and giving consideration to “best practices” for
HR departments throughout higher education, we are changing and improving how we operate
and support faculty and staff across the University.
I am pleased to announce that the Office of Human Resources is changing the way we
do business. The biggest change in the realignment of our organization structure is
the creation of four (4) new positions referred to as HR partners. These positions
will become a single point of contact (an HR partner) for each department that should
result in better availability, accessibility and response from the OHR.
The partner will function as a consultative resource to faculty and staff providing
guidance and support for HR issues/challenges which will also ensure more consistency
across the University.
In addition to establishing the HR partner role, we also made the following changes;
- Established a Customer Service group who will handle walk-in traffic and phone inquiries to give quicker responses
on routine, straight forward items and issues.
- Realigned functions that work closely together including;
- Relocating our benefits support staff to the main HR office in Admin 101
- Physically grouping business units together to provide more consistent and collaborative
outcomes including establishing the following:
- A Total Rewards unit that includes pay, classification, benefits, recognition and reward programs.
- A Talent Management unit that includes staffing/hiring, training and development, organization development
and HR operations
- An HR Policy and Faculty/Staff Relations unit that includes employee/labor relations, and HR policies and compliance
- A Human Resource Information System unit that will focus on HR systems, technology and data/metric generation
- Physically redesigned our reception area to be more open and inviting
At the start of the year we invite you to join us for an OHR Open House where you
can meet your HR team in person, tour our redesigned offices and find out how we can best support your
HR needs. You will receive more information in the coming weeks about our date and
time for the Open House.
Thanks to everyone who has shared feedback and guided us through this realignment.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Steve Jones
AVP of Human Resources
