A Message from Ujima Donalson
Assistant Vice President, Total Talent Management
As we prepare to welcome another academic year, I’d like to take a moment to share how Total Talent Management is coming together. UWHR reorganized nearly two years ago and in that time we in TTM have been striving to become a cohesive team that offers a robust and comprehensive service model to the University community. To that end, in this issue I’d like to focus on our successes, service commitments and hopes for the future.
We have been fortunate to garner support and resources to enable Director Michael Campbell and other folks in Recruiting and Staffing to better serve the UW, realize long-hoped-for improvements and optimize the “total” in Total Talent Management. Last fall we brought on Terra Kerr in the role of recruiting and sourcing specialist, and she is now collaborating extensively with Diversity Recruiter Ebonee Anderson, whose position was created with funding from the President’s Office. You can read more about the work Ebonee is doing below.
Bringing in people from the private sector who are used to working with a full-cycle recruiting model is opening us up to new possibilities, and together we in TTM are working to bring the UW closer to an ideal talent management model. We’re re-envisioning how we source and hire candidates, and Ebonee and Terra will be collaborating with others in POD and UWHR, as well as across campus, on new strategies for attracting talent and also for engaging, developing and retaining people after they’ve joined the UW community.
Rounding out these efforts to build an integrated talent management framework that includes acquisition, onboarding, development and retention, POD continues to expand our programs and offerings for leaders and staff and to improve the experience for new employees.
The Leadership Café, which we launched in January, connects leaders to people and resources throughout TTM. If you haven’t had a chance to visit lately, I encourage you to view Josina Garnham’s and Catherine Bachy’s short videos with leadership-centered summer reading recommendations, as well as Jeff Leinaweaver’s video exploring organizational storytelling.
Our onboarding specialist Témo Madrigral-Sanchez oversees many aspects of the onboarding experience through Welcome Day, OneUW and the Onboarding Toolkit for UW Managers. Témo has been instrumental in keeping our onboarding program fresh, and he has also partnered with others in TTM and with the ISC to further improve and ensure consistency with our onboarding messaging for both employees and managers.
As you will read below, POD has also been focusing on diversifying our offerings in response to both stated and perceived needs, and you can look forward to a number of new classes in the coming quarters. We are still in the first year of The Learning Lab, the online learning platform we’re offering via a partnership with SkillSoft. Participation has not yet reached its full potential, yet I feel hopeful more people will invest in this program and just-in-time learning throughout autumn quarter and into 2020.
Finally, “POD by the numbers” shows how our business of serving the learning and development needs of UW staff, leaders and faculty continues to grow and evolve.
As you can see, we have been working hard to ensure that we consistently provide great services and expand available opportunities, and we look forward to embarking upon a new academic year with all of you.
