University Business - March 2008 - (Page 36)

HUMAN RESOURCES The school’s 400 employees and 1,800 students can use the conﬁdential, anonymous system to report a wide variety of crimes, such as hazing, vandalism, domestic violence, harassment, sexual oﬀenses, hate crimes, and discrimination. The public safety department initially reviews them all. If the complaint is employee related, then HR is brought into the picture. “We like to think we’re a totally safe place, but we don’t want to be naive,” Juchems says, adding that fewer than one dozen complaints have been reported so far. “We don’t want people to bottle up their concerns. … If people aren’t sharing what they observe, we aren’t going to be solving problems.” in a mall, or a church, says Lee Struble, director of public safety. “A lot of colleges just don’t have that commitment from HR in their orientation programs,” he says. Several years ago, HR and public safety leaders at Monroe trained about 30 fulltime faculty and staﬀ to become mediators. In addition, the school’s new campuswide campaign focuses on student civility. Although it was launched by the public safety department and the college’s counseling center, which falls under the student services umbrella, the HR director still serves on the campaign’s committee. The campaign’s goal is to change the campus’s climate by building a culture of respect. Struble says if the school’s 34,000 students respect each other, they’ll be less angry and less inclined to become violent. The same holds true for faculty. Do professors treat students with respect? The committee recently conducted campuswide focus groups and a campus survey. What they learned was surprising. Students requested standardization for acceptable student behavior and classroom management. For instance, if a student’s cell phone rings during class, should the instructor ignore it, allowing the student’s conversation to disrupt the entire class, or enforce a classroom policy that bans cell phone usage during class? The committee is in the midst of reviewing all survey and student responses and will oﬀer recommendations to the college’s senior administration. Struble suspects one suggestion will involve HR’s training faculty on what student behaviors will and won’t be tolerated in the classroom and how to eﬀectively deal with intimidating students like those who make violent threats or act out in class. Although the HR oﬃce already has a range of responsibilities, supporting or enhancing the eﬀorts of campus security must rank high on the to-do list. There’s really no compromise for employee safety. “Most HR [professionals] are open to it, but others put safety on the back burner,” says Struble. “If you can get an HR director to realize that security and safety are important, that’s the biggest nut to crack.” only be irresponsible but also dangerous. Healy says campus safety and security demand HR’s attention. This should start with the hiring process. How is HR driving policies related to background checks, reference checks, grievance procedures, and even mediation, which mitigate the chances of people acting out because they believe they’ve been mistreated? Are employees being trained to respond to threatening phone calls, restraining orders, and other potentially dangerous situations? While hard to believe, one problem Healy sometimes encounters among HR professionals is the “It won’t happen here” syndrome. Others blame their lack of involvement on conﬁdentiality, believing they will violate some state or federal law if they reveal information about a person’s behavior or participate in threat assessments or treatment management. Healy compares conﬁdentiality to a bubble. Since security and HR are part of that same bubble, the departments can exchange information for security or safety purposes. From training managers as mediators to educating all employees about grievance procedures, there are a number of ways HR can help enhance campus safety. “The most important way is by being an advocate for sound policies, procedures, and a culture that creates a respectful workplace,” Healy says. “Whatever HR can do as an entity to create that type of atmosphere contributes to overall safety and security.” A LITTLE RESPECT No matter how small a college or university is, it has some process for identifying and reporting potentially threatening or violent behavior. Some schools oﬀer an online system where employees can anonymously report blatant threats, bizarre activity, or uncomfortable behavior. Two years ago, HR and the public safety department brought MySafeCampus (www.mysafecampus.com), an online incident reporting system, to Wartburg College (Iowa). It oﬀers students and employees an additional outlet to share security concerns, says Jane Juchems, HR director. Since security and HR are part of the same conﬁdentiality “bubble,” they can exchange information for security or safety purposes. Juchems also meets every quarter with the college’s risk management director and the school’s insurance broker to identify new security-related tools and discuss best practices introduced by other schools. In fact, she says the website was the broker’s idea. His company even pays the website’s monthly service fee. HR departments at other schools carve out time during new hire orientations to address security and safety, and they require all employees to complete a crash course in emergency preparedness. A good example is Monroe Community College (N.Y.). Besides learning about the school’s security policies and procedures during new employee orientations, its 1,441 employees must also participate in a 90-minute workshop that presents in-depth information about the college’s emergency preparedness plan and how to access it on the web. Likewise, they learn what to do and whom to call if violence erupts, how to deal with diﬀerent shooter scenarios, and how to survive violent encounters whether they happen at school, 36 | March 2008 universitybusiness.com http://www.mysafecampus.com http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - March 2008

University Business - March 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
EduComm Insert
Financial Aid
Money Matters
Human Resources
Higher One Insert
Community College
Cadets on Campus
Keeping an Eye on the Network
Sizing Up Second Life
Endowment Management
What's New
Calendar of Events
End Note

University Business - March 2008