Good afternoon,
In this month’s campus partner spotlight, OE is highlighting Vicki Bradley, associate vice chancellor for Human Resources and Equal Opportunity and Compliance. Vicki has collaborated with OE on numerous projects, most recently playing an integral role as a design team member on the space dashboard project. Vicki’s strategic mindset and thoughtful approach to problem-solving have benefited many operational initiatives across the Carolina campus. Below, Vicki talks about her time at Carolina and her work with OE.
1. What is your current role and how long have you worked at UNC?
I serve as an associate vice chancellor in Human Resources and Equal Opportunity and Compliance, overseeing two units in our division. The first is the HR Information Management (HRIM) unit, which is responsible for HR Systems and HR data/reporting. As part of my role, I serve as the HR Data Steward for the university. I also oversee the Business Office which provides HR, Finance, IT and administrative support to the division. It’s hard to believe, but I will be celebrating my 20th anniversary at the university in just over a month!
2. What has been your involvement with Operational Excellence?
I have been engaged with Operational Excellence in a variety of projects over the years, starting in 2018 with the early impact hiring project, which streamlined the hiring process for SHRA and EHRA Non-faculty employees. We reduced the recruiting timeline (between posting a job in PeopleAdmin and offer acceptance) for these groups of employees — and created the hiring playbook, which is still used today. I was also on the Roles and Responsibilities team which focused on clarifying roles in HR, Finance and Research Admin. Two of the key deliverables for HR were: (1) launching a student employment website to clarify HR processes related to student employees and (2) developing standardized principal functions for HR, Finance and IT to lay the foundation for future people analytics capabilities. I also served on the project team which created the salary dashboard for campus executives and HR leaders.
There are several other projects where the HRIM team was not technically on the design team but did a lot of background work. For example, for the “Future of Work” project, we helped parse out which jobs were eligible for hybrid or remote work based on job duties, implemented a way to capture employees’ Work Location forms in ConnectCarolina, and created a way to store/report on information about whether employees are on-site, remote or hybrid (and the % time they work on-site). I also served on a project where a space utilization dashboard was created so facilities planning and design could see how remote/hybrid worker arrangements affect the use of administrative space on campus.
Currently, I am assisting with ramping up an Operational Excellence project to look at streamlining faculty hiring, much as we did with the early impact hiring project several years ago. I also serve on the Operational Excellence campus portfolio committee, which keeps up with all major projects across the university to keep leadership informed of existing activities as new Operational Excellence projects are being considered.
3. What do you see as Operational Excellence’s impact on your work and/or the operations of the University?
Operational Excellence has worked with units throughout campus and has demonstrated the value of continual process improvement. Not only do they lead such projects, but they teach project participants how to identify problems, focus on high-value wins, implement concrete operational changes, engage in effective change management and measure results. They are helping UNC build a culture of continuous business process improvement one project at a time. Their Lean Foundations training also helps employees develop concrete skills in this area.
While Operational Excellence works on all kinds of great projects, I think the value they bring is particularly important in projects that cross multiple business areas on campus, ensuring a coordinated approach to solving multi-dimensional problems.
4. When you are not working, how do you enjoy spending your time?
I love spending time outdoors. I walk most days and enjoy spending time with family and friends, camping, and participating in various water activities at one of the local lakes. I also enjoy reading, and listening to audiobooks when holding a book isn’t feasible.
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