Staff Initiatives

In the year since IU Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav and Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Todd Richardson announced a new staff initiative in February 2023, substantial progress has been achieved. 

This ongoing, iterative initiative is designed to effectively recruit, retain, and engage a talented and diverse staff. It reflects our commitment to remaining an outstanding place to work, learn, and grow.

Broadly, in alignment with the initiative, IUB is committed to: 

• Increasing the sense of belonging and well-being among staff, including strengthening resources dedicated to overall health and access to medical care. 
• Ensuring more equitable compensation, workloads, and working environments across campus. 
• Providing staff with robust professional growth and development opportunities, including clarified career pathways. 
• Leveraging clear and actionable data about the staff experience to empower supervisors to be increasingly responsive to employee ideas and opportunities. 

The initiative focuses on pursuing several tangible improvements, with updates outlined: 

Reorient an existing staff position to focus on staff at the Bloomington campus in close alignment with central IU HR and campus HR leaders. The position will join the provost’s leadership team and will help shape and advance a holistic staff experience. 

• Jamie Gayer transitioned into the role of IUB Senior HR Director in July 2023 and is actively collaborating with HR partners across campus to enhance the staff experience. 

Benchmark staff compensation and staffing levels by area with our Big Ten and other market peers. 

• IU HR has begun implementing market-based compensation ranges for Student Services; Educational Resources and Technology; Research; and Legal, Safety, and Protection job families. 
• IU HR is committed to expanding the benchmarking process across all job families and reviewing data on a planned schedule. 

Continue Employee Recognition Awards and discretionary bonuses, as well as increased monetary awards for staff award recipients. 

• In 2023, the Staff Merit Award program doubled the award value and increased the total number of recipients selected. For 2024, the nomination process is being simplified, to make the program more accessible. 
• Based on feedback from the campus community, the Long Service Recognition program’s reception date will be held within the same calendar year employees reach their service milestone. The next reception will be held in November 2024, to celebrate all who reach milestones this year.  
• In place of a campus-wide reception, retirement celebrations will be held at the departmental level to emphasize the depth and quality of departmental connections. 

Pursue new and novel ways to address the primary care medical shortage in Bloomington, including exploring the option of an on-site clinic for employees. 

• In March 2024, IUB launched Marathon Health Employee Health Center, which offers IUB employees comprehensive primary, acute (sick), and mental/behavioral health care in a convenient, affordable setting. 
• IU Human Resources and Healthy IU are committed to supporting Hoosiers’ mental health and well-being. They have created a designated Workplace Mental Health website to ensure employees’ needs are met.  

Improve central onboarding and staff orientation for all incoming IUB staff. 

• This iterative and evolving process’s foundation rests on onboarding materials collected from HR leaders across campus. It will continue to be a focal point for the campus over the next year, as campus HR leaders work in alignment with a university-wide onboarding development project. 

Increase coordination with campus HR leaders and communication with employees on HR programs, resources, staff engagement opportunities, and retention and staffing trends. 

• Over the past year, the Office of the Provost has strengthened its relationship with the Bloomington Staff Council to increase understanding of staff perspectives on topics of importance to the campus community. A regular meeting cadence is in place to ensure consistent communication.   
• In summer 2024, the Office of the Provost redefined a current employee’s position to focus directly on the staff experience at IU Bloomington. Raluca Glunk, project management specialist, will begin developing deeper relationships with the staff council, union leadership, and HR partners to increase awareness of staff development opportunities, gather knowledge of the employee experience, and ensure communications to staff meet employee needs. 

Launch "Performance at IU: A culture of conversations," a new performance management process for all Bloomington staff to ensure that all staff have consistent annual conversations and ongoing feedback from supervisors on their work performance and potential growth opportunities. 

• By spring 2024, Performance at IU was running full speed, with conversations happening at every level across campus. These conversations are now echoing in each department, as the feedback gathered sprouts new ideas and pathways for success.  
• The Bloomington campus had an overall success rate of 95% for eligible employees having expectations conversations with their supervisors. This equates to more than 3,800 employees. 

Create additional manager and supervisor training for schools and units to promote stronger leadership and better enable effective staff management. 

• IU HR is continuing to expand upon its leadership development program, Leading at IU, with in-person and online learning experiences that will provide learning and growth opportunities to emerging, experienced, and executive-level leaders. 
• IU is committed to strengthening its leaders and, in turn, building stronger, more successful teams. Leading at IU offers self-guided e-learning, real-time, and peer-to-peer learning, mentoring, and one-on-one coaching by the IUHR Talent & Organization Development team. 
• The firstLeading at IU serieslaunched in Fall 2024. 

Continue the MyVoice engagement survey on a biannual basis, including expanded sharing of results and development of meaningful action plans with all staff. 

• My Voice at IU is a continuous process to increase employee engagement and ensure IU remains a workplace of choice. 2024 is a survey year, with deployment in fall 2024.