July 11, 2024 Vice Chancellor Representatives’ Meeting Minutes
Attendees: Caley Allen, Warren Chui, Chassidy Dixon, Alicea Easthope-Frazer, Adrienne Gibilisco, Megan Harvell, Keith Hines, James Holman, Jennifer Larson, Daysia Mardré, Becci Menghini, Reid, Charlissa Rice, Lori Shamblin, James Stamey, Tyrone Williams, Natasha Young
Keith Hines called the meeting to order at 2 p.m. in the absence of Katie Musgrove. He welcomed all present to the meeting and read the first question from the agenda on behalf of Michael Williams:
(M. Williams) Does the defunding of long-established DEI efforts prevent University departments, offices, or other business units from obtaining 3rd party funding (such as through grants) to continue those efforts? Is the Board’s decision a removal of funding or is it a ban?
Becci Menghini said that the answer to this question is a bit more nuanced and a bit different than the way the question is framed. She said that the most recent changes to Section 300 represent a reframing of policy that are distinct from the budget. She said that these changes do not represent a budget decision and are a redirection rather than a ban. Menghini said that these efforts need to fall in a handful of categories, specifically in student success and employee well-being.
She was uncertain as to the purpose of obtaining third party funding from the grant. She found it difficult to answer the question directly, but she said that there were already limitations on what training could provide as a result of legislation earlier in the year. For example, a unit doing a student success program with a grant to do this could still do so in compliance with the regulations as written in Section 305.
Menghini said that the Office of Human Resources is looking at the implications of these changes. Dr. Leah Cox of the central DEI office is driving the conversation as to how the University will comply with the new changes under Section 300. The University has received some guidance in this area from the UNC System Office. The System Office will apparently provide a template which will outline how the University can report, because it is obligated to report in September regarding its progress in this area. As of present, the University has not yet received this template, but officials are thinking about how and what shifts may need to be made to navigate around emerging personnel questions. She said that officials are still trying to interpret and make guesses about how it might accomplish these tasks. Menghini said that meetings are ongoing on this question.
Hines read the next question, again on behalf of Michael Williams:
(M. Williams) A complaint from one of my Employee Forum constituents: one of the more frustrating issues in hiring is the length of time and lack of transparency around comp & class adjustments for existing and new positions. They take months, by which point candidates have moved on or the comparisons are no longer valid, and there is no transparency into what information is used to prepare them. Are there any efforts to address this, either by speeding them up or offering more context for the results?
Menghini was grateful to hear this feedback. She again noted the need for a specific example to be provided for her team to address in this question regarding classification and compensation. She said that one team manages SHRA salary ranges while another team manages EHRA compensation and ranges. She estimated that the SHRA team ran 640 actions of this sort in the last month, up from the team’s average of 120/month. She observed that the timing for these actions is not taking much longer than those of standard framing, so she was uncertain why things are taking months.
In any event, she hated to hear the implications of this question and she did not want this to become an ongoing issue. She asked if the questioner or the original employee could provide a specific example to their HR representative or to central OHR directly. Nonetheless, she said that in general, these actions should not take that long to accomplish. With the new ranges, it should be pretty clear where people fall and how to analyze their placement. Regarding an EHRA employee, the situation is a bit different as the University does not have the relevant ranges.
Menghini said that there continues to be an ongoing challenge where people may think that someone else left their job leaving an employee with their work who thus feel that they deserve more money or a reclassification of their position. She said that this is not the way that compensation generally works, as doing more work of someone underneath you does not allow for more resources, unfortunately. Similarly doing more of the same work does not allow for more resources under these compensation rules.
Menghini granted that some employees may think that this is a dumb rule, but she said that this is a rule that University officials must follow. She said that the OHR team has been working hard to keep up with these situations and granted that there have been some delays in certain spaces. Still, she was happy to follow up on specific examples in this area.
Keith Hines read the next question from Adrianne Gibilisco;
(Gibilisco) The Diversity Council reports to the CDO and Vice Provost of the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion (UODI). If the decision is made to close UODI, to whom will the Diversity Council report? Can they remain a functioning entity to ensure DEI issues are addressed and shared with the Chancellor?
Menghini said that this was a totally fair question and said that there is a current team studying this question, regarding how the University will comply with changes to Section 300. She said that officials are really trying to work toward student success and employee well-being aspects of the section. She hoped that there would be plenty of avenues for people to raise issues, whether they are diversity or otherwise related, and said that the University does not want to eliminate the ability for people to raise issues.
Menghini said that the University is in the early stages of pulling apart what might work, what might comply, and what squarely fits in areas like student success. Furthermore, the University is pursuing this effort not just with the central Diversity office but also with every academic unit and all of the deans of individual schools, who have been asked to look at which of their diversity programs fall under student success or employee well-being. These are things that the University can continue to do.
Meghan Harvell read the next question on the agenda:
(Harvell) I would like to present an issue of concern among facilities employees regarding a seemingly covert switch in vacant job positions from SHRA to EHRA.
She expanded on this question, noting that she had heard from other employees that the issue is that there is no transparency about why supervisory positions in Facilities are being shifted to EHRA. She thought that a concern among her peers has arisen because they do not want to lose their status because of job security, benefits, and other things. Still, they also want to grow and move up in their positions. If all supervisory management positions are being moved to EHRA, this fact deters them from applying and moving up the ladder.
Menghini said that this question has been addressed previously through the Forum. She said that officials were also discussing this situation with units, asking that leaders address the question within their units. She said that there has been a broad effort for some time from the System level to help navigate the transition from SHRA to EHRA and the possibility of employee conversions from the former to the latter.
Menghini said that this effort has been underway for a long time, because it composes part of how the UNC System can ensure that positions meet the needs of the University as opposed to positions that are aligned exactly with other State agencies. The University has not yet been able to update its EHRA salary ranges, allowing people to know what rate they would move into upon conversion from SHRA. The University is not forcing people to undergo these conversions.
However, the University has been told that any vacant positions must be converted into EHRA positions as of approximately six months ago. As of now, salaries are aligned with the SHRA ranges, but once the University has the updated EHRA ranges, units will have the ability to move these salaries into new ranges [??].
Menghini emphasized that no one in a current position has an obligation to move from SHRA to EHRA. Employees have the right to choose their status in that position, for whatever reason. However, employees do not have the right to carry through this choice to new positions.
Menghini sought to dispel one myth: that an employee has greater job security in an SHRA role. She said that people like to say that this effort is being made to move employees into EHRA roles so that they can be fired more easily. She said that from a HR perspective, there is no purpose to hire people in order to fire them. She said firing people is not a good use of time or energy. Instead, officials ideally terminate people only when there is a need to do so.
“At-will” employment does give an opportunity to carry out firings more liberally, but the number of times it is used for this purpose is very minimal, Menghini said. “At-will” employment status does not eliminate an employee’s ability to grieve their firing. She thought that the idea that there is a ton more protection under SHRA versus EHRA was not entirely true. She said she would value any help that the Forum could provide in dispelling this myth, because it is something that is repeated and repeated.
One area in which the designations are truly different is in longevity pay, because SHRA status does provide longevity pay to people who have been here for a really long time. Menghini said that one thing that EHRA has that SHRA does not is the capacity at the System level to control positional salary ranges and salary flexibility. An employee relatively new in their career will undoubtedly receive more leverage long-term for salary growth in an EHRA role, Menghini said. She added, however, that this transition does not make sense for everyone, particularly employees close to retirement with longevity pay. She said that the focus is on supporting the long-term career growth for University employees.
Harvell appreciated this perspective and said she had read up on the differences between SHRA and EHRA designations. She recalled that at the last Forum meeting, she had asked about the University’s willingness to hire contractors rather than using staff already present. She thought that factors like a lack of unit funding, continued employee departures without replacements, and other things contribute to employee pushback over things like perceived job security related to EHRA or SHRA status. She thought that these employees were beginning to open their eyes and realize that they are not as valued as other contractors the University might use to do their jobs.
Menghini said that she heard Harvell, although she did not agree with her conclusion. She said that if a financial exigency exists such that a unit cannot manage to cover an employee’s salary, the unit can discontinue the employee, be they EHRA or SHRA. Employees do not have protections from termination under financial exigency. She emphasized that the University does not often use this leverage because it works very hard to ensure that these exigencies do not occur.
Menghini wished to make it clear that the numbers do not bear out a supposition that the University is terminating employees on the EHRA side in numbers that are far larger than the SHRA side. She noted another supposition that EHRA conversions are encouraged because at-will status provides supervisors more ability to dismiss an employee as a retaliatory action under the guise of some other reason. However, she noted the University’s policy against retaliation which includes the right to grieve this action.
In all of these cases, Menghini admittedly starts from the premise that most people are acting in good faith. Most of the time bad things do not happen, but when bad things happen there are ways to address these matters, including grievance rights. She said that both SHRA and EHRA status has their pros and cons, without picking one over the other. Instead, she was reciting the rules that have grievance rights and regulations around how both of these statuses are managed, which are intended to provide options for the employee more than they provide options for the employer. She sought to provide employees with the information needed to make decisions regarding their particular situations. This was one reason for delaying implementation of the EHRA transition as it is recognized that employees could not decide between the two designations until ascertaining what salary they would earn as an EHRA employee.
Menghini also noted the requirement that employees in EHRA positions require a college degree to advance, an understandable impediment for some to being rolled into EHRA position and then never having an opportunity to move into the next job lacking a degree. She said that OHR is working to update documentation to establish that experience will matter as much as instead of a degree when hiring positions.
Harvell thanked Menghini for her remarks and said that she appreciated her response to these many varied questions. Menghini noted the circumstances in which officials are working on a long-range transition to a personnel system that best supports the University. She said that a set of rules now exists that dictate University actions regarding SHRA employees, another set for EHRA employees, and a third set for faculty, each with a different governance structure.
Menghini said that the University is trying to find ways to make these experiences as similar as possible, regardless of one’s position. Figuring out how to allow people to cross these lines is the difficult part, she said. No one would design a system from the beginning the way the University’s employment system is now, she concluded.
Harvell said the conversation was blending into her next question, the final one on the meeting’s agenda:
(Harvell) I would also like clarification regarding the new banding rates for state employees. After the previous meeting I am under the impression that those rates are not being adjusted with the UNC budget because we are “state employees.”
Menghini clarified that new ranges do not mean that employees will automatically receive salary increases. New ranges instead mean that where everyone sits as a percentage of this range has changed. Now, it is up to individual units to evaluate how this new fact aligns with its current goals. She said that units will need to ask where they sit and where do they want to be?
Accordingly, units are adjusting to assist any employees who fell wholly beneath the new ranges. She said that this round of adjustments had largely been completed, although most units have not put in relevant budget requests because they did not know what these numbers would eventually be. Units are now using whatever little money is available to make these salary adjustments now.
Units will have the chance to adjust salaries to the new ranges which put employees and units where they believe they need to be. In some cases, the process will pull people up from well below the range, following these evaluations as units find money for this purpose. Menghini emphasized that this process must be made according to job title needs not individual favoritism. Thus, unit approvals require back end approval of implementation of requests.
Harvell said that she appreciated why people who fall well below their salary range are receiving their increases. Still, she said that the process seems to throw everything out of whack. She thought that in a lot of departments, inequitable pay ranges are evident because of the way that the new banding rates are being implemented among employees.
Menghini asked Harvell for clarification as to what she meant by inequitable pay ranges. Harvell said that as far as she understood it, anyone who fell below the original banding rate was adjusted to the maximum range for the new banding rates. She said that in her department, people were adjusted to the maximum range overnight, putting people at $8,000 more annually than they were making the day prior, a considerable difference in salary. Then, when other people doing the exact same job do not receive that raise and are classified differently, this process typifies inequitable pay rates.
Menghini said that employees should not be classified differently if they are doing the same job. Harvell said that in her unit, employees do the exact same job with a caveat that some must hold a Commercial Drivers’ License (CDL) to drive the unit’s only roll off truck.
Menghini said that Harvell was illustrating the importance of a specific example. She said that OHR should speak with the HR officer in the unit in a very specific context. Officials from Classification and Compensation would next be consulted if a larger question emerges.
Harvell said that she had already spoken with Adam Beck, Bill Stalker (?), Steven Sherver (?), and everyone in HR regarding this situation. Their response was that Harvell was sharing a personal example. However, she said that there are other similar examples, in the Grounds department, for example, of when rates were implemented for people who were getting paid the least, thrusting them above people who were earning salaries just above them. She said that sometimes the people who were making right above these formerly lowest paid employees were their supervisors or crew leaders.
Menghini said that there was some salary compression that officials were attempting to address, which was addressed at the local level together with the OHR team. She said that the team had insights as to where the compression is, back to when the first housekeeper received their adjustment. She said that wages create an added challenge because they only allow a change in the one band, not all of the others. Now that the University has information on these other bands, these compression instances are being corrected.
Menghini said that the unit in question communicated very clearly with its employees that the increase was a short-term solution. Now the University has the longer-term solution and those bands are being adjusted to deal with that compression.
Unfortunately, the Office of State Human Resources (OSHR) did not provide the University the authority to adjust, only providing the permission to do the housekeeper increase in the very first round of adjustments. Now, all of the other ranges have been updated and this compression is being dealt with.
Harvell guessed that the way to alleviate that compression would be to adjust all of the new banding rates for all departments and their personnel. Menghini agreed but added that OSHR did not grant the University to do all at once previously.
Menghini emphasized that all of these adjustments require money. Harvell understood that at the very beginning of this situation OSHR had said that UNC-Chapel Hill would have a pool of money after the budget was approved to use to adjust all of these rates. Menghini said that this is true for State agencies but is not true for the University System. She thought that someone likely believed this was true and they were in some ways correct. There was a pool of money—the Labor Market Adjustment Reserve (LMAR)—that was granted to State agencies when it came out but it was excluded from the University System. So, unfortunately, there was no money allocated and units were forced to find funds for these adjustments.
Menghini said that all in all units have done quite well in finding money for this purpose because they know of its importance. OHR did all that it could to advise units that these adjustments were forthcoming, advising units to hold onto resources as much as possible. Menghini said that a lot of work remains in this area as the University just received the new ranges for SHRA employees. She said that units must be deliberate in evaluating everyone in a category at one time, rather than picking and choosing.
Harvell said that this change seems rather stagnant in her electoral division, the Skilled Craft division. Menghini said that the numbers do not actually show that is the case but she offered to go back and look at them further, particularly in the Grounds department.
Keith Hines thanked Menghini and the various questioners for their contributions. The meeting adjourned by acclamation at 3:41 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Matt Banks, Recording Secretary