UCSF Leaders Approve Initiatives to Improve Staff Diversity, Work Climate, Professional Development

By Lisa Cisneros

UCSF leaders have recently approved a number of initiatives aimed at improving the diversity of staff as well as their professional development opportunities and work climate. Importantly, the initiatives include new financial incentives and mechanisms for oversight and accountability to more effectively seek and support diversity among staff. Diversity is fundamental to UCSF’s mission of advancing health worldwide™ and service to the people of California, the most ethnically and racially diverse state in the United States. All the new initiatives aim to ensure that UCSF — the second largest employer in San Francisco — is more supportive of its workforce of more than 14,000 campus and medical center career employees. The initiatives will be phased in over the next year or two as part of UCSF’s implementation of the UCSF Strategic Plan. In fact, nurturing diversity and promoting a supportive work environment are two of the seven major priorities in the first-ever campuswide strategic plan, which was unveiled in June 2007. UCSF Chancellor Mike Bishop, MD, and the Executive Committee, a group consisting of the deans, vice chancellors and chief executive officer of UCSF Medical Center, endorsed the incentives in January. “UCSF has a great opportunity through improving its diversity and work climate and committing to professional development to retain and grow the very talented, committed and diverse workforce it will need to sustain excellence and support its programs,” said Senior Vice Chancellor Steve Barclay. Among the new initiatives, UCSF will:
  • Provide financial and other incentives for departments/units engaging in good faith efforts to achieve diversity in hiring
  • Expand professional development opportunities, including piloting a new career path system, for staff seeking advancement at the University
  • Require training for supervisors, managers and departmental Human Resources managers on diversity awareness, best practices in staff outreach, recruitment and retention
The establishment of a proposed ombuds office, in which a specially trained, neutral person is charged with helping faculty, staff, students and trainees with problems in a confidential environment, has been deferred at this time because of the uncertainty of looming state budget cuts.

Supporting Diversity

Barclay and Mark Laret, chief executive officer of UCSF Medical Center, were asked by the chancellor to increase and support diversity of staff. “We spend a lot of time in the hospital talking about our facilities, the number of beds, building a new medical center at Mission Bay and that’s all very exciting,” Laret said. “But in reality, what makes a great medical center, what makes a great university, is the quality of the people that we’re able to recruit and retain.” For his part, Barclay began the task by conducting research on the progress and pitfalls of the past. He combed through employee opinion survey results, UC and UCSF reports, affirmative action plans, and the latest research and data on diversity. “It became very clear to me that we couldn’t address staff diversity if we didn’t address the work climate and professional development of staff,” Barclay said. A September 2007 report by a UC study group on diversity came to the same conclusion. “UC has not kept up with the pace of demographic change in California,” it reported. “Change is needed to achieve a level of diversity among students, faculty and staff appropriate to our mission, as well as an open and inclusive climate on each of our campuses.” To address diversity, work climate and professional development, Barclay called upon UCSF experts in these areas, namely: Michael Adams, director of the Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity office (AAEOD), Alma Sisco-Smith, director of the UCSF Work~Life Resource Center, and Mike Tyburski, director of campus Human Resources. The three began meeting regularly in mid-2007 to develop a course of action that was aligned with the UCSF Strategic Plan. The prospect that staff initiatives are receiving attention and resources gives those who have championed these areas for years hope for effective change. “It feels, at last, that there’s some organizational alignment and that we’re all swimming in the same direction,” said Sisco-Smith. Indeed, the initiatives reiterate recommendations made in a comprehensive report by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Diversity (CACD). The CACD report, issued in May 2007, looked back to 1995 at all the recommendations made by the CACD, noting the outcome of each. In the end, the CACD recommended 27 different ways that UCSF could achieve its goals of creating a more diverse campus community. Several of the recommendations related to achieving diversity among academics were adopted last year by the recently formed Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Academic Diversity (CCAD), chaired by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Eugene Washington, MD.

Achieving Results

While UCSF has rewarded best practices in recruitment of a diverse staff at the annual luncheon hosted by the AAEOD, the University will begin distributing cash bonuses to recognize individuals and departments for engaging in good faith efforts and achieving progress toward goals. “It’s important that we have incentives for good faith efforts and results,” Adams said. “Up until now, it has been driven by individual motivation, not by an institutional mandate. This will allow leadership to provide a stronger message to those who need more support, direction and clear expectations.” Managers will now have to demonstrate and document for the record their good faith efforts when filling specific staff positions where underrepresentation exists, respecting federal and state laws. Good faith efforts, which are posted in UCSF’s affirmative action plan, include posting open positions externally in media that target a specific population, as well as internally within the department itself to give aspiring staff an opportunity to advance their careers. Managers will have the responsibility to fill out and submit a questionnaire to Human Resources that indicates any and all recruitment actions they took. Human Resources will then compile the results and provide an annual report to the chancellor and the Executive Committee. Those who fail to meet standards of good faith efforts will be notified at the chancellor’s discretion. Criteria for discretionary action may include reduced departmental financial support. To achieve buy-in and approval of the Executive Committee of the initiatives, Barclay ensured that his colleagues reviewed and approved the plans every step along the way, which is critical to accepting responsibility and accountability for action, he noted. Meanwhile, the UC Office of the President (UCOP) has proposed that annual performance evaluations of the senior management group include efforts in support of the University’s diversity, equal opportunity and affirmative action plan, among other factors in the reviews. “It’s critical that we have accountability for achieving affirmative action plans and that performance evaluations include how well we are achieving diversity,” Barclay said. “We have to set the bar higher.” Academic appointees are also reviewed for their efforts in diversity. The UC Academic Personnel Manual policy governing faculty appointment and advancement (APM 210) was amended, effective July 2005, so that faculty contributions to diversity would receive recognition and reward in the academic personnel process. While UC policy states that a candidate’s race or gender may not be considered in selection for appointments, search committees may give special consideration to those who have engaged in service to historically underrepresented groups or those who display drive and succeed in their careers in spite of barriers that disproportionately disadvantage them. Helping staff succeed and get promoted at UCSF is a big part of creating a supportive work environment and nurturing diversity, Tyburski said. “With respect to diversity, what we see is that the higher up in the organization, the less diverse staff are,” Tyburski said. “And while diversity among staff is good overall at UCSF, we recognize that it’s not at all levels yet.” UCSF’s workforce data from a UC 2006 report indicates that:
  • Professionals and support staff are 42.6 percent white, 8.3 percent black, 11.5 percent Hispanic, 34.8 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 0.5 percent American Indian/Alaskan Native
  • Managers and senior professionals consist of 71.1 percent white, 4.4 percent black, 4.9 percent Hispanic, 18.5 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 0.4 percent American Indian/Alaskan Native
  • The highest-ranking staff, known as the Senior Management Group of 21 individuals, are 85.7 percent white, 4.8 percent black, 4.8 percent Hispanic and 4.8 percent Asian/Pacific Islander
To put staff on track to career advancement, UCSF will pilot a career path system similar to one developed by UC Berkeley. The idea is to plot out the steps, training, education and experience needed to go from one level of a particular profession to another. UCSF will launch the career path system for three job categories: finance, human resources and research administration, Tyburski said. The system was endorsed by the UCSF Council on Staff Worklife, which is co-chaired by Tyburski and his counterpart at UCSF Medical Center, David Odato. In addition, UCSF will begin to use a new learning management system purchased by UCOP that will allow UCSF to list all of its course offerings in one database. The system will allow Human Resources to track staff development plans. UCSF also will implement a new leadership development program, to be modeled after the one offered to faculty and another offered to medical center leaders. The leadership program for staff will be two-tiered: one for the senior managers and managers and senior professionals in levels six and higher, and one for managers and senior professionals in levels one through five.

Assessing the Campus Climate

To cast more light on how staff are treated, UCSF will begin to contract with a firm to conduct interviews with new staff to check in with them within the first couple of months of their employment. This is one way that managers can intervene early on to offer support, guidance and counseling if necessary. UCSF has also engaged a firm to conduct exit interviews of staff, the same firm used by the medical center and School of Medicine. Staff who resign often have an opportunity to air their concerns or share their reasons for leaving with department managers, but this information may not be documented or disclosed to campus leadership. By learning why people leave and looking for patterns, UCSF will be better able to stem the tide of staff turnover, which is costly and disruptive to the work environment. Another proposal aimed at improving the work climate, creating an ombuds program similar to those at other UC campuses and universities, has been deferred due to anticipated state budget cuts. Sisco-Smith first proposed this program in 1998, but the University was not ready for the position, she noted, and had experienced some missteps with earlier attempts. Now, with seven years’ experience with the campus mediation program, Sisco-Smith believes that UCSF can implement an ombuds program that is consistent with the code of ethics and standards of practice of the International Ombuds Association and UC Ombuds Best Practices. The ombuds, as a designated neutral resource, would provide a safe and strictly confidential place for the entire campus community to process and solve problem issues. The UCSF Work~Life Resource Center has been operating as a quasi-ombuds office. The full transition can be made with additional resources — when available — as well as a change in authority and structure, Sisco-Smith said. Sisco-Smith, who serves on the UC-wide Staff Diversity Council and a work group on campus climate, part of the larger UC study group on diversity, is also looking at how employee surveys can be better utilized and implemented across the 10-campus system to ensure consistency and quality of data, so that trends can be addressed systemwide. The UC study group on diversity echoed this recommendation in its September 2007 report. “UC has not conducted or reported any comprehensive assessments of campus climate,” it stated. “Without data and comprehensive, sustained assessment, the source and significance of individual perceptions and anecdotes regarding climate cannot be quantified nor understood. UC should study climate on every campus every three to five years and report the findings of these studies to the Regents.” For its part, UCSF will conduct its fourth staff opinion survey this spring. For Adams, director of the AAEOD since 1988 and a member of a couple of campus diversity committees, UCSF’s work to achieve a diverse community has been a long and sometimes beleaguered one. But this latest indication of leadership support has him feeling that his patience and perseverance will pay off. “I’ve remained hopeful knowing that change takes time,” Adams said. “It’s being around people who really want to influence change that makes it all worthwhile.”

Staff Initiatives at a Glance

Nurturing Diversity

  • Require training for supervisors, managers and department Human Resources managers on diversity awareness, best practices in outreach, recruitment and retention.
  • Create and budget financial and other incentives for departments/units engaging in good faith efforts. Augment chancellor’s best practices awards; implement reporting system for accountability.

Improving Institutional Climate

  • Engage vendor to conduct interviews of new hires and those who have resigned, retroactive to July 2007, through a neutral, impartial and confidential process as a way to measure satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
  • Establish a civility policy on unacceptable workplace behavior, which is included in the UCSF Code of Conduct.
    • Institutionalize an ombuds program to provide a safe and strictly confidential place for the entire campus community to process and solve problem issues. (On hold due to looming budget cuts.)

Promoting Professional Development

  • Expand development opportunities for staff, in part by piloting the creation of career paths for finance, Human Resources and research administration; then continue to develop for all jobs.
  • Use programs from other campuses, and identify and purchase existing staff development programs.
  • Update and revitalize the supervisory development program, including validating a basic level of competence.
  • Implement a leadership development program in two tiers: one for managers in levels six and higher, and one for managers in levels one through five.
  • Align professional development offerings with UCSF Strategic Plan.
  • Charge campus Human Resources with developing an overarching training architecture to coordinate advertisement, enrollment and tracking through a learning management system and delivery of training opportunities.

Photo by Susan Merrell