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Good afternoon! This has been a busy week in Operational Excellence. The Steering Committee met yesterday and we had a robust discussion centered around research administration. Thank you for those of you that participated – your input is invaluable. Below is an update for all our workstreams:

  • The Travel & Expense Team continued to refine resources for a new travel website and discussed what structure the website should have to be most helpful to our travelers.
  • The HR Team continued their work in two groups to address position management and student employment. The position management group presented their work to the HR Business Process subcommittee pertaining to their work on standard principal functions and is expecting feedback in the coming days. The student employment group aligned on the overall structure of the student employment website. They plan to continue refining the resources between meetings and will talk to students about their experiences with employment at Carolina.
  • The Research Team came together as the full design team to discuss what a potential pilot design could look like in this space. They then continued building the playbook for federal award setup and designing communications for the award negotiation process.
  • In Early Impact Work – Cohort 3 schools and units are receiving calendar invites to trainings (their cohort officially begins in mid-July) and the design teams for Hiring and Procurement continue to improve the playbook and resources.

A few weeks ago, we started the practice of highlighting Operational Excellence Champions. This week I’d like to tell you about the leaders of our “war rooms” in the Early Impact work. Through bi-weekly teleconference meetings, these leaders provide the structure and guidance that have allowed for the great change we are seeing in both the hiring and procurement. This work was not originally in their job descriptions and yet they have taken it on with great energy and helped the cohorts thrive. Thank you to John Medlin, Jessica Hwang-Strickland, Don Jones, Amanda Grisak, Sara Reece, Robin Willow-Johnson and Roseanda Hall. We appreciate your work! You are truly Champions of Operational Excellence.

Please feel free to share this email with your colleagues. You can also visit our website to learn more about Operational Excellence, read my previous updates and submit feedback. If you have any questions, please reach out to me at wernoski@email.unc.edu. I read every email.

Best,
Rick


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