February 1, 2022
Dear Colleagues,
I am sincerely thankful for your efforts, and those of our dedicated campus community, in response to constantly changing conditions. The challenges we have faced, and continue to face, to provide as normal an experience for our students as possible certainly have us using our creative problem solving skills with regularity.
I shared with you in early October that I was going to be focused on our workforce. I am sure that this did not come as a surprise to you. Global changes to how people work, how they want to work, and how organizations function, are happening across all industries, including higher education. It is both an optimal time and a necessity to focus on our staffing and administrative structure in light of these significant changes.
I was fortunate to arrive just after our new Chief Human Resources Officer, Marymichele Delaney, began her tenure at the College. With a charge to transform Human Resources at Holy Cross, she has wasted no time in getting started. This fall we saw the rollout of a new Remote Work Policy, a new medical plan, service and retention initiatives for our hourly staff and a new financial planning benefit.
With a restructured HR team, this spring will bring even more improvements in the areas of training and professional development, comprehensive compensation reviews, and enhanced HR technology to increase customer service. The HR team will soon be reaching out to divisions to introduce their dedicated HR liaison. Under Marymichele’s leadership, HR will also launch a series of open listening sessions to provide information, answer questions and help address concerns, and all staff are encouraged to participate.
In October, I also shared with you that we seek to ensure we have the administrative structure, roles and staffing in place to support Holy Cross’ future success. I am excited to announce that we will be partnering with Deloitte Consulting, the leader in workforce strategy worldwide, to understand our current organizational structure more deeply (note, this is not a review of faculty departmental structure). As part of this assessment, Deloitte’s expert higher education team will help us identify opportunities to optimize our structure and operations in a way that empowers us to thrive professionally in support of our core mission.
Over the course of the spring semester, our colleagues at Deloitte will engage with the community to understand the important work we do and solicit perspectives, feedback, and ideas for the future. Through this highly collaborative process, they will help us identify the structures necessary to best serve our people and support Holy Cross’ future success. Importantly, the Deloitte team will maintain strict confidentiality throughout this process; all information shared with them in meetings or in writing will be summarized in a non-attributable way, so I encourage everyone to be open and transparent. There will be many opportunities to engage in this project, including:
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Group sessions
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1-on-1 interviews
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Surveys
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Office hours
I recognize that this type of initiative can cause anxiety. This is important work to enable our individual and collective success, and it is important that we engage in it together. Only with all voices being heard can we successfully chart our roadmap for the future.
I want to thank Heather Hayes, Vice President and Chief of Staff, and Dottie Hauver, Vice President for Administration and Finance, who have agreed to serve as Executive Sponsors of this project. You will soon hear from Heather and Dottie regarding next steps for what will be a transformative and collaborative process of planning for the future.
I look forward to participating in these important discussions with you as we build on the existing excellence of our great College and meet the present and future challenges of our ever-changing world.
Sincerely,
Vincent Rougeau
President