Staff and Faculty Success

Building a welcoming community where excellence and opportunity thrive will attract and retain talent and create conditions in which staff and faculty can do their best work, individually and collaboratively. We will seek recognition for the excellence and innovation this culture fosters, pursuing an increase in faculty and staff external awards, particularly the number of recipients of highly prestigious academic awards and national academies membership.

MSU’s biggest investment — and most important asset — is the exceptionally talented faculty and staff at the core of the Spartan community. Our commitments to supporting the success of undergraduate and graduate students, responding to community needs and addressing the challenges of a changing world are hollow without a similarly substantive commitment to the well-being of our staff and faculty who make this work possible.

Today’s work environment is more flexible and dynamic than ever, connected through various modes of digital communication. As our employees integrate career goals with efforts to create a meaningful life for themselves and their families, our employees will expect — and we will deliver — ongoing opportunities to grow and develop.

Creating a healthy, supportive work environment also necessitates strong organizational commitment to addressing workplace harm including sexual harassment and incivility. MSU has developed a Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct (RVSM) Strategic Plan and is investing in programs to prevent incidents from occurring in our community.

Our aspiration is to create an environment in which staff and faculty thrive — an environment that serves as a magnet for the broadest range of exemplary, energized talent we need now and in the future.
 

Goal: Support career development and well-being of staff and faculty at MSU, focusing on creating a best-in-class workplace culture and welcoming environment in which excellence and opportunity thrive
 

One

Create a workplace culture that advances inclusive excellence as reflected in the land-grant mission and supports all staff and faculty

Strategies/Actions

• Adopt a regularly administered, university-wide, comprehensive climate survey to establish benchmarks and goals for success at the unit level and provide the resources to analyze the data
• Continue the comprehensive RVSM campus climate survey to track progress on raising awareness, assess the effectiveness of prevention, and guide program and policy decisions
• Support implementation of the Okanagan Charter, including embedding health into all aspects of campus culture and emphasizing a culture of caring as a significant factor in an individual’s health
• Review university policies, practices and opportunity structures to identify better ways to advance inclusive excellence, foster dialogue and provide support to staff and faculty
• Establish mechanisms of support, consultation and coaching for continuous improvement in pursuit of a campus community that is physically and psychologically safe and free of harassment and incivility
• Improve communications and administrative practices and systems to provide information when desired and needed to create a greater sense of agency and empowerment
• Establish processes to systematically identify and remove barriers to success and reduce work inefficiencies to improve the experience of working at MSU

Two

Make MSU a workplace of choice — and a desirable place to stay — for discipline-leading, innovative and creative staff and faculty 

Strategies/Actions 

• Engage university experts to aid in developing a comprehensive framework for supporting staff and faculty success
• Review university policies, procedures and practices to facilitate remote, flexible and blended working options to expand the university’s access to a broad range of talent
• Adopt new promotion and tenure frameworks to better align with and support MSU’s commitment to publicly engaged participatory, transdisciplinary and intersectional research and excellence in teaching
• Provide educators access to professional development necessary to provide high-quality, evidence-based learning experiences across all modes of instruction
• Create and sustain effective support services including childcare, eldercare, employee assistance/counseling and services through the Center for Survivors and the Prevention, Outreach and Education Department
• Systematically pursue honorifics and expand external awards nominations and establish new internal awards and/or recognitions for staff and faculty; these should include awards for excellence as well as awards recognizing the importance of living other aspects of our values
• Expand opportunities for staff and faculty to gather and engage in informal and supportive contexts to improve campus culture

Three

Invest in leadership and career development opportunities for staff and faculty that contribute to a culture of care, respect and inclusion

Strategies/Actions

• Establish a dynamic and inclusive mentoring culture that links individual success to unit-level, college and university success
• Invest in more facilitators for trauma-informed practices of harm reduction
• Implement a modernized staff classification and compensation system
• Expand opportunities for leadership, career growth and skill development for all, and leverage the university’s educational resources to advance the careers of support staff, academic staff and faculty
• Establish a formal talent management program; extend student career-development infrastructure to staff