Strategic Planning, Organizational Culture

Topic: 

How can the University Library promote a vibrant and dynamic organizational culture and structure that is supportive of and benefits from diversity and inclusion?

Themes:

Communication:

  • Provide more opportunities for face to face conversation.
  • Accommodate different personality types and different communication styles.
  • Freedom to talk openly without repercussions. Permission to bring up idea, voice an opinion and know it is being heard and considered.
  • Communication across committees and from committees to units and from units to committees.
  • Have Library wide office hours one day per week.
  • Mechanism for anonymously reporting problems/issues related to diversity.
  • How can we gather opinions from people who do not come to retreats?
  • Clearly post policies so everyone or anyone can find.
  • Develop best practices for LibNews, provide training, and web guide.

Organizational Culture:

  • Sense of ownership and pride in your work, a sense of having a stake in the organization.
  • Provide spaces/training to directly address unacceptable behavior.
  • More opportunities to see people from other units and see other spaces/libraries.
  • Be able to fail; use failure as a learning tool.
  • Organization must be nimble; be able to change quickly.
  • Do a better job of diversity in hiring.
  • Provide exit interviews for all employees.  We need to understand why people leave the Library.

Recognition and Rewards:

  • Appreciation for a job well done. People thank each other for helping out.
  • Fair and equitable pay structure with regular raises. Salary compression is still an issue for some long-term employees.

Training:

  • Training and discussion about diversity itself as a subject.
  • Make it mandatory for all to attend discussions about diversity and inclusion.
  • Library managers might need more training
  • Library Advancement could seek to establish endowed fund for staff development and training

Stakeholders (Groups):

Library Administration, Library HR, Diversity Committee, Staff Development and Training Committee

Hiring Plan Impact:

None at this time

Adjacencies with other Topical Areas: