University of Wisconsin students and members of the Human Resources Design Advisory Committee examined the university’s Human Resources Design Project and concerns involved with it at a Tuesday event.

The event was structured to inform both graduate and undergraduate students on implications the design project would have on them, allowing all students the chance to voice opinions or recommendations on the redesign.

“There’s definitely a clear intent of getting important information from students, faculty and staff and it makes things very hopeful for the project as a whole,” graduate student Eleni Schirmer, who attended the meeting, said.

The overall goal of the project is to build a more efficient and effective UW human resources system that best serves the needs of the university, its employees and the citizens of Wisconsin, Office of HR Development Training Officer Harry Webne-Behrman said.

According to Webne-Behrman, creating a thoughtful design involves making the system more efficient, by adding flexibility and responsiveness, creating more alignment with an employee life cycle, being consistent with policies and processes and being transparent.

The successful employee life-cycle starts with attracting diverse, cultured employees, he said. From there, the committee hopes to retain those employees, develop their skill sets, advance them along pathways in a variety of fields and finally transition those employees into life outside of UW.

Mark Walters, director of classified HR and co-leader of the project, said UW’s current structures do not provide enough tools to retain students as long as possible, an important step in the employee life-cycle.

This drawn-out employee life-cycle, however, involves a lot of attracting, retaining and branding, Schirmer said. Schirmer said this makes the plan seem very much like one that would appear in a corporation. Schirmer expressed concerns about the collaboration of a corporate-like system that thrives on efficiency with education which, she said, is a very inefficient process.

Academic Personnel Office Director Steve Lund said the culture at UW has evolved over 150 years, and his experience shows the culture will not change very much no matter what the policies change.

Lund said the way feedback is being conducted for the project to involve all facets of faculty, staff and students is much different from the actions of a corporation. He said a corporation would never go about the feedback process this way, and that the current process shows both respect and a need to move with the university culture.

Graduate student Kevin Walters also said it is important that the design project steers clear of a corporation-like process.

“We want to make sure we’re not thinking like a corporation and solving things like a corporation,” Kevin Walters said. “[We need to] make sure we’re being true to Wisconsin, true to us as the Wisconsin Idea.”

Webne-Behrman said skepticism and concerns like these are what the design and collaboration teams were looking for, and that he wants to hear voices and opinions of which the team was previously unaware.

The HR Design Committee has hopes of addressing all feedback over the summer, allowing for a presentation of the plan by the start of the 2012-13 school year, Webne-Behrman said.