ABOUT CAREER COMPASS: HISTORY
Following is a brief history of Career Compass, which grew out of the Staff Infrastructure Initiative.
Problems identified
In September 2000, Chancellor Robert Berdahl announced the formation of a Compensation Advisory Committee (CAC), a diverse group of faculty and staff, to study and recommend solutions to the problems with the classification and compensation systems for staff titles. The campus had long recognized that the forty-year-old job classification structure and the accompanying compensation program needed to change.
Throughout the 2000-01 academic year, CAC studied the challenges posed by outdated staff personnel programs. CAC’s report, delivered to the Chancellor in May 2001, included eight recommendations for classification, compensation, career development, and performance management.
Sandy Haire, then the Assistant Vice Chancellor-Human Resources and a member of CAC, recommended that the Chancellor appoint a small steering committee composed of faculty, non-academic managers, and other stakeholders to oversee the formidable task of carrying out CAC’s recommendations. Vice Chancellor Beth Burnside was asked by the Chancellor to lead this effort as the Chair of the Staff Infrastructure Steering Committee (SISC). Appointed in the fall of 2001, the SISC was charged with guiding, monitoring, evaluating, and making recommendations to the Office of Human Resources on the implementation of the recommendations from the Compensation Advisory Committee report. In the fall of 2002 Vice Chancellor Burnside stated, "My dream is that the work being produced by the Office of Human Resources and SISC will result in a system of job classification and compensation that will be fair and equitable as well as responsive to the market. It will provide managers with tools to evaluate and encourage performance and provide staff with clear linkages and paths for their careers, so that people will feel better about working here."
Research and development begins with the job structure
SISC quickly determined that in order to identify the appropriate compensation levels for campus jobs, those jobs must be organized in a structure that could be compared to similar jobs in both higher education and other non-profit and private sector organizations.
The campus engaged an external human resources consulting group, Terranova Consulting, to work with the committee and Human Resources. To guide the work, they helped SISC draft a Staff Strategy Statement to ensure that the initiative would align to the values and priorities of the campus. Additional statements were later developed to articulate the campus philosophy about staff compensation, performance management, and career development. These statements were endorsed by the Chancellor's Cabinet.
A team of staff from Human Resources began working with campus subject matter experts to develop a set of job families, and categories within those families, that reflect the work staff do at Berkeley, in a logical and consistent structure that can be matched to the market from which Berkeley recruits its staff.
The new job family structure was reviewed, vetted with staff, supervisors, and managers, then revised and reviewed again, and in 2008 the campus began the task of mapping each current position into the new structure.
The hallmark of this effort has been the continuous participation of campus staff who perform the work in each occupation, managers and supervisors who direct it, and administrative leaders who are accountable for the performance of their organizations. This approach has been time-consuming, but SISC and Human Resources believe that the best possible -- and most credible -- outcome is the result. Throughout the life of the initiative, communication to the campus community through articles, briefings, and open forums has been another guiding principle.
As Vice Chancellor Burnside stepped down from her position as Chair of SISC in November 2008, she commented, "Since 2002 many people across campus, from Human Resources professionals to subject matter experts in campus departments, have been working toward the goals of clearly defined job standards and responsibilities, a performance management system that links performance evaluation to those responsibilities, and career development pathways defined by the new job standards. It is extremely satisfying to see the fruits of these hard labors coming together in Career Compass, making UC Berkeley a more supportive and satisfying environment in which to work."
Parallel tracks
Realizing the Compensation Advisory Committee's vision for the first time, job duties, performance management, and career development will be integrated consistently across the campus.
In developing the job structure, Human Resources also created detailed job standards for each field, family, category, and level. These job standards formed the basis for the core competencies that are now included in the new performance evaluation tools for supervisory and managerial, professional, and operational and technical positions.
The performance management forms developed in 2007 align these competencies with the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to be successful in more than 675 positions described in the new job standards. This integration of criteria for performance evaluation with job duties gives the staff member and the supervisor or manager an opportunity to discuss what is expected in the current role and to understand the path for professional development.
As positions were mapped into the new job structure, the compensation unit in Human Resources began development of the accompanying compensation program. Since the inception of the SISC initiatives, the campus recognized the need for staff positions to be sensitive to our various labor markets. Accordingly, the new job structure was developed with relevant local, national, and higher education survey data.
As the mapping is completed, the campus will be better able to identify the key priorities for staff development programs. Supervisors, managers, and staff will develop professional development plans based on the clearly defined requirements of the staff member’s current job and the unit's goals.
Having systems that are rational and relevant to the work being done today allows campus leaders to make better decisions, to address equity, and to help all staff succeed. Because the systems are transparent and easy to administer, staff can understand and believe in the basis for decisions about their performance, compensation, and development, and can see avenues for their own career mobility.