Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Office of Human Resources at the University of North Carolina Wilmington has received the 2010 Excellence in Human Resources Practices Award from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). This award honors the achievements of college and university human resource professionals or teams in improving the quality of programs and services on their own campuses through effective HR administrative practices.

UNC Wilmington lost approximately 100 total faculty and staff positions in the state budget cuts of 2009; 30 of these positions were occupied at the time. In lieu of the traditional reduction in force (RIF) process in which employees are laid off and must look for new jobs, UNCW's HR office created unique partnerships across divisions within the university in order to reassign the 30 individuals to open positions rather than letting them go.

"At UNCW, we value our employees and the knowledge and skills they bring to our campus community," said William Fleming, assistant to the chancellor for human resources. "We also care about them as individuals and wanted to do the best we could to provide stability for these employees and their families. Although RIF policies are mandated by state government, UNCW was able to develop an internal process that took a more holistic approach to eliminating positions. We accomplished the same end result in a way that was much more organizationally strategic and individually sensitive."

Employees whose positions were eliminated were assigned to a new department into a position that utilized their existing skills but also gave them the opportunity to develop new ones. If they felt the position was not a good fit for them, they were able to search for another job while still employed. If a comparable position was not available, the employee had the option to take a severance package.

Managers across the university assisted with the transition, many holding positions open while administrators worked to match the skill sets and experiences of employees, who would otherwise be RIF'd, with the qualifications identified in the position descriptions. Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo said she charged Human Resources and all university administrators to handle the budget cuts in this fashion because actively valuing and fostering the engagement of the workforce during difficult times is critically important.

"We care deeply about our employees, and we didn't want them to lose their jobs," said DePaolo. "We also care about the economic effect those job losses would have had on the region, and keeping our employees helped to strengthen the region's economic recovery."

The CUPA-HR honor includes a $2,000 cash contribution to a scholarship or endowment fund at the institution. Human Resources elected to contribute its cash award to the UNCW Staff Senate Scholarship, which provides funding to assist staff employees or members of their immediate families in paying for education costs at UNCW. The HR contribution helped to increase the fund to $25,000 in order to make it a fully endowed scholarship fund.

CUPA-HR's annual National Higher Education Human Resources Awards honor excellence in higher education human resources and recognize service and commitment to CUPA-HR and innovation in the profession. In May, UNCW Human Resources received the Southern Region "Best Practices" award, which made the university eligible for the national honor.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu