May 15, 2003
Building Up the Business of Service
By Thomas
Kohout
The Business and Service Committee (BSC), led by Executive Vice President
and Treasurer Louis Katz and Senior Vice President for Student and Academic
Support Services Robert Chernak, announced the establishment of a two-pronged
project framework featuring an employee resources core group and a service
excellence core group to reintroduce GW’s core values and reinvigorate
the quality of service provided for all branches of the University.
As part of the overall strategic initiative launched last year, the
two committees will meet weekly to explore issues related to the two
fundamental elements of the University’s business blueprint and
develop models and procedures to guide the improvement process.
These groups will make recommendations about the scope, priority, activity,
and key issues of the project and develop potential solutions and communication
strategies. Among the key initiatives are a redefinition of the employee
recruitment and orientation processes, construction of a student services
Internet site, and establishment of a regular monitoring system to evaluate
the University’s progress. According to Katz, the core groups comprise
representatives from central administrative offices such as Human Resource
Services, the Office of the General Counsel, Payroll Services, as well
as Information Systems and Services.
“These groups are not meant to be enormous, but they are a pretty
good cross section of the workings of the University,” says Katz.
Among those selected for the employee core group are Barbara Marshall,
director of the Office of Faculty Personnel; Helen Spencer, assistant
vice president for research services; and Susan Kaplan, associate vice
president for human resources. Katz says the service group also seeks
to cut a broad swath across the University community.
“Part of the way to deliver better services to our stakeholders
is to provide an overall better context for our employees,” explains
Katz.
The employee group will explore aspects of orientation, training, professional
development, and communications. According to Katz, when most employees
were hired they were chosen for a select set of technical skills. It
has not been University policy to discuss what kinds of basic values
or traits GW is looking for from every employee.
“In the hiring process there was no screening process that looked
at some specific things, whether the candidate understands working in
teams, understands the mission of the institution,” Katz says.
The current employee orientation, he notes, is more focused on explaining
employee benefits rather than understanding the mission of the institution.
After that, new employees are pointed in the direction of their offices
and cubicles and left to figure things out for themselves.
“Nowhere did we tell employees what’s important at this institution,
what this institution is about, how to succeed at this institution,”
says Katz. “Then we wonder why our employees don’t understand
what we are about.”
Understanding what GW is about and how employees succeed in this environment
is directly linked to how successfully the University community’s
needs are met. The lack of context, Katz says, needs to be addressed
at every step of the employment cycle: through recruitment, orientation,
employee evaluation, and motivation.
“We are a tuition-driven institution,” reminds Katz. “What’s
the single largest source of tuition dollars at this institution? Undergraduate
tuition.”
He continues that it’s no accident that the University invests
a large percentage of resources into the undergraduate environment from
the recruitment, to socialization, to the classroom, and then to placement.
“If every employee knew that,” insists Katz, “literally
with clarity, versus ‘let them figure it out for themselves,’
what a difference that would make. Then, when we talk about why it’s
important to improve service, things start making sense.”
On the service delivery side, the leading initiative has been the development
of a one-stop shopping center for student services on the University
Web site, enabling students to manage their needs such as registration,
housing, financial aid, and paying their bills without having to hunt
and peck through the various departmental Web sites. With that first
level of service automated, a second tier group could focus on handling
basic questions and problems, and a third group of specialists could
be dedicated to taking ownership of particularly tricky problems and
staying with those tasks until their resolution.
To gauge whether the BSC is moving the University fast enough, or even
in the right direction, a gap survey originally developed last year
will become a regular evaluation tool.
“We’re going to develop other metrics too. There are metrics
that you can measure by yourself — looking at transactions, error
rates, etc.,” says Katz. “The gap survey measures your customer’s
view of the world. That’s a comprehensive look, but we’re
also going to encourage certain areas of the institution to do regular
surveys of their customers.”
Katz adds that the committee will look at the integrity of the survey,
explaining that although the measurement was instrumental in developing
the plan so far, he believes it can be fine-tuned. “The more times
we use it, it will keep getting better and better, and the results we
get will be more meaningful.”
In June, Katz will present an update on the efforts of the BSC to the
Board of Trustees during its June retreat. From that presentation the
overall strategic plan will be published over the summer.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
