Members of the UW-Madison Faculty Senate had many questions for members of the human resources redesign team following a presentation Monday.
Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell said over 150 faculty and staff members have been working to build a framework for a new HR structure on campus over the past year and are currently seeking input from campus community members on how to improve their recommendations.
The redesign began after the state gave UW system institutions additional flexibility in its biennial budget.
Some faculty senators cautioned members of the project against using a “business model,” which focuses on keeping compensation competitive with institutions similar to UW-Madison, to bring talented workers to the university, saying it will not necessarily reward good teaching.
“I’m struck often on this campus that some of our most famous scientists quite rightly have a request matched from other universities, but we never match faculty members who are teachers,” Faculty Senator John Sharpless said.
Faculty Senator Cyrena Pondrom said redesign members should rethink their recommendation to consolidate “academic staff” such as researchers with “classified staff” such as custodial workers, saying the two groups have different needs.
“I think that you will find that the coherence of that group is so absent that common policies governing all of these people actually turn out to be inappropriate,” Pondrom said.
Levigna said the proposal to join the groups has been contentious and members of the redesign team are open to changing the recommendation to consolidate them.
State legislation requires the implementation of the new design to go into effect no later than July 1, 2013.
