Dear Colleagues:
Happy Spring! Our team is pleased to see the many ways HR and Payroll professionals across the campus are coming together to learn, support, and share knowledge with one another. These include workshops on HRS-related technologies, the first Learning Cohort for HR Competencies, monthly HR Topics “Third Thursday” workshops, and an emerging array of online learning resources. Brand new this month has been the unveiling of “The Rep,” our online Q & A platform. This site offers the HR and Payroll communities real-time opportunities to pose questions, offer answers, and share best practices together… it has potential to significantly improve the ways we all communicate with one another, learn from each other, and identify gaps in our knowledge that we seek to address. Please see the accompanying article about “The Rep” in this Newsletter, and get involved in learning how it works in the coming weeks. Special thanks to Aaron Stern, OHR Web Developer, for taking a nascent idea that Sarah offered and transforming it into “The Rep”!
We recently attended the CUPA-HR Midwest Regional Conference in St. Louis. The CUPA-HR Conference offered timely updates regarding the state of HR-related legislation and an array of very useful sessions, including offerings on ethics and leadership, problem-solving approaches, dealing with micro-aggressions in the workplace, recruitment strategies, etc. There were numerous networking opportunities as well, fostering important connections and relationships that we hope will enhance our efforts here on campus. We were also pleased that the HR-CoP Team was chosen to offer a breakout session at the Conference. Sarah, Josh, and I presented, “It Starts with Trust: Developing HR Communities of Practice at UW–Madison,” that we hope demonstrated and celebrated the many ways that this campus community has been contributing to this initiative. Special thanks to Carol Hillmer and Julie Karpelenia for a very special contribution to that presentation, and to so many of you for providing leadership in the various projects and groups that we are recognizing in this presentation.
Harry