The Operational Excellence Executive Committee recently approved a request to postpone the move to a Campus Shared Services Center by four months.
The planned move to a Fourth Street building off campus is part of the Operational Excellence initiative, which aims to save the campus $75 million annually beginning in fiscal year 2016 by streamlining and consolidating administrative services under one roof. While the “early adopters” — a group of 170 campus employees who will be the first to transition into the new center — were originally scheduled to move in September, a number of concerns has pushed the move back to January 2013.
According to a June 12 announcement from the committee, concerns over the preparedness of the building, the readiness of the center’s information technology infrastructure, the increased number of early adopters, the additional stress on staff during the fall semester and the desire to get staff engaged in the move all contributed to the delay.
“Because of the substantial investment of resources and the interconnectivity with many other campus initiatives, we need to have in place and tested as much of the (center’s) infrastructure as possible,” said Emily Howe, communications consultant for Campus Shared Services Implementation, in an email.
Before the early adopters move into the center, it will be renovated by October, and furniture and technology will be installed by mid- to late November, at which point training and testing activities will begin, Howe said in the email.
Although the center could then theoretically be ready to open in mid-November, the official opening of the center will occur in January 2013 to avoid the stress of moving during the fall semester, according to Howe.
On June 28, the committee will notify staff members who will be reassigned to the center as early adopters. Chris Morrison, a computer resource specialist for the campus, saw an unintentional consequence of the combination of the postponed move with the looming staff notifications.
“It gives the campus time to absorb what’s about to happen and have time to push back,” said Morrison. “A lot of people will find out they are about to move, and hopefully their clients will find out. I would hope that people start to see what they are going to lose and what’s going to be moved across town, and maybe that will change how people feel about this move.”
Morrison and many other staff members have recently protested the move to the center, as they feel the committee has not acceptably listened to the staff’s perspective. However, Howe stated that she believes postponing the move has improved staff morale pertaining to the center since the protests.
“We have heard near unanimous support for the adjustment, and the additional time and thought it affords the process,” said Howe in an email. “We hear that this change is being viewed as a positive one, and have gotten feedback that the campus community appreciates having more time to ready their units and plan for transitioning into (the center).”
But Morrison still does not feel the initiative is effectively trying to represent staff interests.
“They’ve done a lot of going through the motions of getting input, but there’s a difference between listening and hearing,” he said.
Whether or not all staff are behind the move, Operational Excellence will continue to operate on the same larger timeline as it did before the initial move into the center was postponed. According to Howe, all of the 500 to 625 staff members slated to move to the center are still set to do so by the original deadline of late 2014.
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If the campus is so very short on money, why has $175,000 just been quietly granted so an OE committee can draft 7 to 10 little catch phrases to make us all work harder and not smarter? http://oe.berkeley.edu/FundsBerkeleyOps2.shtml
LOL
Administrative incompetence, as always
Most people don’t like change even when it’s necessary….and so even though everyone seems to agree that we have to make better financial decisions in this country, no one wants to be the one affected by necessary changes to save money through smarter financial decisions. Can’t we be grateful for our jobs, and to the people trying to make things work so we will still have a job? Take your minds off yourself, and think of the greater good. And name-calling? Really? Is that the kind of behavior that will make people want to listen to you? I don’t think so.
When OE goes after the big rich executives at the top, your words will mean something. Until then, stfu.
If we were all making six-figure salaries, your “we’re all in this together” cheerleading might be relevant. But that’s clearly not the case.
The point is that the shared services move saves money only on paper. Removing support staff to an office complex 2 miles away makes very little sense. Spending millions of dollars on renovating such a complex so that it’s usable makes very little sense.
Closing down departmental/unit-specific HR offices does make sense. But shutting down campus HRs and centralizing them in Riverside (WTF, *Riverside*?!) is insane. We will now have to go through call centers to get answers to benefits & comp questions. Ridiculous.
“We have heard near unanimous support for the adjustment, and the additional time and thought it affords the process”
Of course you have! Most people recognize that putting off a stupid and insane idea until later is always better than doing it right now, now NOW! Especially when even the lunatics in charge know that the new $26+ million building (cost not included as part of OE costs so as to boost reported “savings”) isn’t going to be ready until January, at the earliest, anyway. The longer the delay, the better. Who knows, maybe in the interval the campus community will find the strength and the hope to resist the corporate zombies and children playing with guns currently posing as University leadership. Ya never know, stranger things have happened. Look at you! A walking, talking, hairless monkey. Who’d have believed that before it happened?
As for the “process,” it was supposed to include in-person analysis (by OE staff) of the work being done by workers under consideration for transfer to the shared service center to determine if their work really is “shareable.” This was supposed to have happened in April. It got postponed to May, and then to June. Then the idea was quietly dropped. Apparently, there is no need to know what workers actually do before making radical changes to how and where they do it. So much for the “additional time and thought it affords the process.”
I have a proposal for Operational Excellence; a motto that fits better than its name:
“The beatings will continue until morale improves!”