February 12, 2009

POD to offer programs to help employees and leaders deal with coming budget challenges

There are tough times ahead as the University prepares for budget cuts from the Legislature. No one knows yet exactly how deep those cuts will go, but they will almost certainly mean that some employees will be laid off and those left behind will not be unaffected. To provide some relief, Professional and Organizational Development is preparing a variety of programs — all either free or low cost — that are designed to help both employees and managers.

First up is a series, “The Resilient Organization,” designed to help UW leaders and their organizations succeed in difficult times. The first presentation, Planning in Chaos, by Dee Endelman, is set for 1 to 3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19.

“Dee is a very popular and well respected trainer who teaches for us regularly,” said Beth Warrick, executive director of POD. “Her presentation will help managers learn how to plan in the midst of all the shifting sand we’re standing on right now.”

The second presentation, Master Process, by Art Frohwerk, is from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, March 25. Frohwerk will show leaders how to visually represent their operations so that they can more easily leverage resources, address waste and gaps and focus on priorities.

Each session is $40, a price made possible by the presenters — both from outside the University — waiving their fees. “I put out an appeal to people in our consulting alliance, asking them to donate their time and many of them were happy to do it,” Warrick said.

POD also plans to make available peer coaching circles for managers in March, after a pilot that begins next week. POD already does the coaching circles during its Strategic Leadership Program (SLP) for managers. Essentially, managers will gather and be split into groups of five to six. Then each will have 15 minutes to present an issue he or she is dealing with. Other members of the group will ask questions and offer suggestions.

“It’s incredibly popular in SLP, and we’ve had many requests to facilitate bringing people together for peer coaching circles,” Warrick said. “It’s essentially a way of getting new perspectives on something you’re struggling with.”

Participants will be asked to fill out a form describing their issue in preparation for the session, which lasts for two hours. The cost is just $20.

Warrick herself will offer a free session for managers called Delivering Difficult News: Layoffs, in which she goes over some of their concerns and fears about this difficult task, gives them suggestions for how to carry it out, provides an opportunity to practice and shares strategies for helping their employees through this transition. It will be offered at least a dozen times in March, April and May.

The POD offerings aren’t just for managers, however. Career Development Manager Susan Templeton will be offering four one-hour workshops — Assessing Your Strengths, Conducting a Job Search, Resume and Cover Letter Writing and Interviewing. Two of them will be offered each week on a rotating basis so that over a two-week period an individual could take all four. These will be offered starting Feb. 17 and are also free.

POD will also continue its current policy of offering select quarterly courses (space available) either free or at a greatly reduced cost to employees in active layoff status. All UW employees have free access to SkillSoft E-learning, a system that includes more than 1,000 online courses. And that access can continue through 2009 after a layoff if the person established an account beforehand.

“You need your UWNetID to gain access to the application,” Warrick said, “but once you’ve established an account, you don’t need it anymore. You use an ID and a PIN number that you set up. We currently have 3,000 users; we have space for 10,000, so there’s plenty of capacity for folks to sign up.”

Warrick knows that what’s ahead is not going to be easy for anyone. Back in 2001 she faced similar times on a smaller scale when she was asked to cut $200,000 from her budget and was forced to lay off some of her employees.

“It was a difficult experience,” she said, “but I have to say that it was an experience that I heard from my staff I handled really well. So as bad as it was, I’m proud of the way I dealt with it. And I reflect on that when I do have to deliver bad news or make tough decisions. I didn’t do it all perfectly, but I try to remember the things I did right and use the knowledge I gained. We’ve created these programs to try to support individuals and managers as much as we can.”

Here are the URLs where you can get information about these programs: