As part of an initiative to overhaul the Human Resources department at University of Wisconsin, the first of two engagement meetings allowed interested campus members to provide input Tuesday afternoon.

The meeting, which drew about 130 attendees according to Director of the Classified Human Resources office Mark Walters, involved breaking up participants into 11 stations for topics pertaining to specifically-charged work teams.

This meeting came as a development within the Human Resource Design project, which was part of the flexibility UW received in the 2011-13 state budget to restructure the pay system and create a more competitive department.

Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell, who is one of the executive sponsors of the project, said in an academic staff assembly meeting Monday evening its primary aims are to create an HR system that is efficient, flexible, consistent and transparent.

“To get here, we need to make sure the system we design is going to be adaptable – this is a once-in-our-lifetime opportunity that’s in front of us right now to design a system that reflects the needs of a major public research university,” he said during the meeting Monday.

He added the primary goal of the two forums this week is to gain additional ideas from the campus community to ensure a variety of options for the project are considered by the 11 work teams.

Walters said that during Tuesday’s meeting each of the 11 stations had participants address each of the focuses of each work team that is currently looking at various aspects of HR for the overhaul.

The feedback provided at Tuesday and this Thursday’s meetings will inform the work teams, which will take the ideas into consideration before giving draft recommendations to a project team by the end of the month, Walters said. 

“We’re going to roll up that feedback so that the work teams can address it before they’re going to be making recommendations by the end of March,” Walters said. “We wanted to have these forums to engage the campus and get its input.”

Then, Walters said, there will be more forums in April before the final recommendations are reviewed by executive sponsors Interim Chancellor David Ward, Provost Paul DeLuca and Bazzell.

He said Tuesday’s meeting included discussion of a wide variety of topics, but highlights included benefits, compensation and employee categories

“As far as trends, people had a lot of good comments as far as compensation and benefits, but there was a really wide variety of things that were discussed,” he said.

Walters said the next meeting will involve the same process of rotating participants through each of the 11 work team topics.

According to a UW statement, the overall UW System has also been granted flexibility to create its own HR structure. In addition, the final recommendations from seven of the work teams will tentatively be due by May 1, according to the statement.

The next campus engagement meeting will take place this Thursday 9-10:30 a.m. in the Upper Gulley of the Carson Gulley Commons.

–Campus Life Editor Jackie Allen contributed to this report.