Staff Advisory Council (SAC)
MONTHLY GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING – MINUTES
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 3:00 PM
Upper Level Chambers, University Center
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I.
II.
Sara Abraham-Oxford
Kim Bennett
Charles Biel
Robert Biller
Rebekah Black
Cynthia Bradfield
Kimberly Byington
Sonya Darr
Stephanie Edgett
Christina Graves
Kelian Hamedi
Stacey Hunstable
Patrick Jackson
Jennifer Knight
Shahab Lawrence
Bethany McLaughlin
Carla Monk
Sam Montee
Tammy Montgomery
Anna Mroch
Latoya Oduniyi
Laura Penuel
Kathryna Porta
Robert Spoon
Erica Waites
Darlene Williams
Gesina Wuenstel
Kolotyolo Yeo
Stephanie Edgett called the meeting to order at 3:010 PM
Guest Speaker Presentation—Human Resources
a. Larry Walker from Human Resources gave a presentation regarding the ongoing
compensation project.
i. The compensation evaluation project was supposed to start in June 2014, it
actually started in September 2014—the original deadline for staff to turn
in evaluation forms got pushed to October 2014 to get as large as possible
response from employees.
ii. Once the descriptions were all turned in they were sent to the consultant
working on the project.
iii. The consultant started matching jobs to survey data
iv. The expectation for the project is to:
1. Develop a comprehensive philosophy that clearly articulates job
titles and corresponding compensation levels.
2. Have competitive staffing levels within fiscal guidelines.
3. Have clear, transparent policies.
4. Create architecture for career development.
5. This project does not mean that staffing review will increase.
v. Progress
1. 3 day-long meetings with the consultants where job descriptions
were updated based on feedback.
2. The consultants have been working to match job codes to salary
survey data.
3. 3 more day-long meetings were spent in January going through
every department, with matching for 65%-70% of jobs on campus.
4. Consultants have been validating matches, and slotting unmatched
jobs into a matrix based on similar competency & skill levels.
5. March 2015 and April 2015 Consultant Projects
a. Develop a proposed structure
i. Develop new salary ranges.
ii. Offer wider range of salaries for each job grade.
iii. Midpoint salaries for jobs will probably be at higher
levels.
b. Develop a proposed set of practices and procedures, to
present to the committee.
c. Get jobs data validated by UTA VPs in a 6-8 week process
i. If there is a budget number developed at this point,
it would only include jobs that are critical to the
university.
6. May 2015 – August 2015 Consultant Projects
a. Possible date to communicate to university (expected in
August, however).
b. Consultants have a commitment to stay in communication
with the university.
7. UTA specific study
III.
a. Academic advisor positions are under a special analysis
from Jean Hood in the HR department.
8. Title/Position changes?
a. April 2015 - August 2015 the committee will be looking at
staff titles, specifically in administrative areas.
i. Make sure that titles are appropriate for career
ladders based on duties and responsibilities.
ii. Duties/responsibilities should be appropriate, fair,
and competitive/
iii. Salary surveys come out every year for staff to fill
out.
1. UTA has not regularly evaluated staff
positions every year, however.
2. The compensation project is looking at
employee pay scale vs. competitive market
and trying to match duties/complexity.
3. If justifiable, a department can request a job
that matches value (for example, if an
employee is working beyond complexity
level of what their listed responsibilities
are).
4. In many cases, departments have been using
similar generic titles.
a. The consultants made note of
outliers in descriptions that do not
match what other departments are
using.
b. During April 2015 – August 2015
the consultants will be clearing up
discrepancies between descriptions.
Update from SAC executive board meeting with UT-System Chancellor Bill
McRaven on January 26, 2015
a. Executive board got about 45 minutes to speak with the chancellor (longer than
the meeting had been scheduled for).
b. Chancellor McRaven had a lot of good questions. This was the chancellor’s
second week of the job, so he was busy trying to get familiarized with issues.
c. SAC brought up the salary study for discussion to bring the issue to the
chancellor’s attention.
d. Discussed the need to increase level of staff retention.
IV.
V.
VI.
i. People tend to leave UTA for a higher salary, SAC doesn’t want to see
UTA be a training ground for other area institutions, particularly
community colleges
ii. Asked about free tuition for employees (or at least a higher reduced rate
than the current 50% reduction offered).
1. SAC was told that for tuition to be entirely free there will be need
to have legislative change (Note: comment brought up at SAC
meeting that legislatively, each institution can waive all the tuition
the fee waiver is what the legislature would have to approve).
iii. Discussed technology on campus (particularly PeopleSoft rollout issues)
1. Staff members want programs that will talk to PeopleSoft.
2. Chancellor McRaven said that we rolled out PeopleSoft too early,
might have UT taskforce meeting to discuss PeopleSoft and getting
it to working across the system.
iv. Discussed the chancellor’s vision for UTA, which is for it to be an Urban
Research School.
Update from President Karbhari meeting with chair on January 26, 2015
a. Strategic plan discussion
b. No SAC members were on any of the strategic plan committees.
i. leading to group meeting on Feb 24th (NOTE: this was snowed out)
ii. Stephanie will send out Strategic Plan for review
iii. Staff were only mentioned a couple of times in the strategic plan (and only
in faculty area at that).
iv. Bring questions and ideas for the meeting with Karbhari on February 24th
discussing the strategic plan!
c. How do we get more school spirit from staff?
i. Amber Zuckerman from University Communications does community
outreach to get UTA swag in stores
ii. Ask for stores to carry UTA stuff
iii. Karbhari will write letter in the summer to push for support for SAC
Introduce chairs
a. Communications
i. Patrick Jackson
b. Social & Outreach
i. Laura Penuel
c. Staff Development
i. Trish Quinones
d. Benefits
i. Stephanie Edgett
Benefits Fair
VII.
a. Twenty-three vendors have signed up for the benefits fair so far.
b. We are currently 2/3 of the way to last year’s booth income.
c. President Karbhari’s office will be helping with the spirit item this year, which
will be vehicle sunshades.
d. We will be giving packages to gold sponsors.
i. There are 7 organizations who have signed up as gold sponsors so far.
e. Catering so far:
i. Aramark (cookies, chicken tenders, pasta)
ii. Jimmy John’s (small sandwiches)
iii. SuperChix (tenders & chips)
f. Blood drive with Carter Blood Care has been scheduled to run concurrently with
the benefits fair.
g. UTA departments can come advertise as well.
Meeting was adjourned at 4:27 PM by Stephanie Edgett. Minutes were recorded by
Rebekah Black.