Improving technologies, employee experiences, and more discussed at IT Leadership Team meeting

April 1, 2021

The Leadership Team met on March 31 to discuss the following projects and updates:

Summer Internships

Get ready to recruit a summer college intern for the period between June 7-August 6, 2021. IT’s internship program provides opportunities to cultivate new talent and recruit future IT employees. Besides earning work experience, interns participate in resume building, interviewing, and other activities during the 10-week program. Interns provide full-time support (37.5 hours, no overtime), and there is no cost to individual departments. Business Operations will send a forthcoming Qualtrics survey for hiring managers who are interested in requesting an intern. For questions in the interim, contact cheri.ross@yale.edu or alina.colossale@yale.edu.

T³ Update (Time, Talent, & Treasure)

Maryann Melio, Business Analyst in IT, shared an update on the T³project, supporting both the Alumni Affairs and Development (AA&D) and Office of Development teams. While both departments share resources (primarily Hopper) to communicate and manage data, this can sometimes introduce complexity. This project aimed to create a better experience for both teams, focusing on increasing utilization and improving the user experience for the AA&D team.

Through the T³ project, the project team focused on developing consistent policies, procedures, and tools to support and engage AA&D volunteers and track and utilize the information they received from volunteers. It also intended to enable staff leadership to understand and celebrate staff members’ efforts related to their work with volunteers and volunteer committees.

Several groups were organized to ensure that “nothing was one-size-fits-all” and that everything was developed in collaboration. These groups centered around the SPRG or Strategic Plan Review Group, who advised, supported, and championed the project. Other groups provided feedback on technical designs, defined guidelines to align technology with business processes, and executed communications, user testing, and training plans.

Ultimately, this multi-year project resulted in the implementation of new features and changed perceptions around the use of Hopper. Maryann shared that “we are truly looking at this in a holistic way, and the tool has been embraced, as a result.” Work continues this Fall 2021, under Hadar Call’s leadership, including developing new features such as expanded insights and interactions, improvements to the volunteer manager infrastructure, and more.

Workplace Survey & Employment Practices, Retention & Culture

Hadar Call and fellow IT colleagues, including Amy Keach, Taber Lightfoot, and April Tiddei, spent months researching and exploring how to enhance ITS’s employee experience, based on feedback from the 2019 Workplace Survey results.

Taber shared that her team applied a user experience (UX) approach to understand and define the problems ITS wants to solve and identify a vision for the future.

April utilized a Double Diamond model for her UX approach, a structured design approach to tackle challenges in multiple phases—from discovery to implementation. Through this model, they interviewed several technology leaders, including leaders from Google, IBM, See Click Fix, and others, to while also gathering internal stakeholder feedback. They consulted industry books and materials on the topic. Their goal was to solve challenges identified in the ITS Workplace Survey, mostly looking at women and individuals who identify as diverse. This group expressed a lower level of positively than men in areas including pay compared to other organizations, eliminating bureaucracy, pay compared to colleagues, morale, and decision-making speed. The group also looked at challenges identified by senior leadership, including retention, transparency, siloes, and more.

Amy Keach shared that, after a significant amount of research was conducted, they concluded that trust and psychological safety, values, diversity, and talent need to be key to ITS culture. Putting these findings into action, attracting, and retaining top talent will rely on providing opportunities for career growth, flexibility, and recognition. Many of the companies they spoke with are using creative approaches to provide these opportunities, including flexible work arrangements. Amy emphasized the need to regularly measure and check for success to deliver an enhanced employee experience.

Taber concluded that the team’s working problem statement and vision are:

  • A roadmap is needed to address culture, retention, and employment practices. The roadmap should be based on Workplace Survey Initiatives, our research, and ITS priorities.
  • We envision a future in which ITS has established a culture of psychological safety where employees are encouraged to be curious and empowered to own their work, resulting in effective teams that are connected to the Yale mission.

Next up, the team will solidify their findings, present them to IT leadership, and solicit feedback to refine their plan further.

Operational Excellence: Business Process Improvement Project

Chris Farmer provided an update on recent projects completed by the Business Process Improvement (BPI) Team–a division of the Operational Excellence team, including Joe Lott, Jessica Foote, and Dick Bascom. This team recently completed projects including Gift Administration, YSM Clinical Cashiering, YSM Infrastructure, and more.

Chris provided insight into the team’s methodology, including defining the organizational context, defining the current state process, analyzing the current state and technology gaps, defining future improvements, and creating a recommended action plan. When the team was in person, they would physically map the current state “on the board” with post-it notes to represent the process’s flow. However, this process has moved to a more virtual model. During analysis, they pose questions like “what do you do,” “how do you do it?” and “who does it?”. During analysis, they consider why things are done a certain way and how this process could be enhanced or improved. In the future state evaluation, they consider “what should be?” and “who should do it?”. The team’s final action plan defines steps to get to a future state.

The BPI process facilitates the examination of strategy, people, process, and technology and drives outcomes such as increased efficiency and the elimination of waste. Departmental needs drive most BPI projects. For questions or to request support, contact christopher.farmer@yale.edu.

Ask John Anything

What can you share about the developing conversation about returning to campus, vis-à-vis policies being established around mask-wearing, etc.?

By August, hopefully, most of the community will be vaccinated, and other health controls will start to lift. I do think that we’ll be expected to wear masks when we return, but this guidance hasn’t been finalized. We’ve talked about starting to make the office available to staff who need or want to return in June. By August, there is an expectation that many will return, with the understanding that some staff may face childcare or other challenges. I hope to have more clarity around this in a month or so. As for longer-term guidance, there are conversations underway.

The next leadership team meeting will be held on Friday, April 28.