Monday, April 30, 2001
Delivering the goods
Public officials, representatives from Bosnia learn about grassroots advocacy
Campus Closeup
Kudos
Board of regents approve 14 new faculty hires
Little succeeds Tripp as director of financial aid
Movers and shakers

Questions&Answers
A beneficial fit
By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Andy Brantley came to UGA from Davidson College as associate vice president for human resources at the beginning of the calendar year. He talked with Columns about current and coming projects in Human Resources.

Columns: I’ve heard you’re not new to UGA.
Brantley: I received both my undergraduate and my master’s degree from the University of Georgia. Obviously, the University of Georgia I experienced as a student in the mid ’80s was a lot different. It’s very exciting to come back to Athens in this role.

Columns: And you were in the band?
Brantley: Some of my fondest student experiences occurred as a member of the Redcoat Band. I was fortunate to be chosen the drum major. My freshman year was the year the football team won the national championship. And then for the next two years we went back to the Sugar Bowl, and then to the Cotton Bowl, and then my first year of graduate school--my last year as drum major--we went to the Citrus Bowl. I was also in the basketball band that went with the team in ’83 to the Final Four. I definitely had lots of great experiences associating with athletics here.
I was also very involved in residence life. I was a resident assistant in Oglethorpe House and, instead of doing a traditional assistantship in the College of Business, I was a graduate resident in Milledge Hall the last year of graduate school.

Columns: What are you looking forward to?
Brantley: This is an extraordinary time to be a part of Human Resources at UGA. There are several initiatives under way.
The classification and compensation study has really just begun. We’ve been working with consultants, and will soon finish that first phase--which will basically give us an idea of what classification and compensation looks like beyond UGA. At that point we will have to decide what this information means for UGA. The actual creation and implementation of a classification and compensation structure for UGA is going to be quite a challenge, but the transition to a new structure is absolutely essential for the university.
Something else that is going to be a major challenge for HR is implementation of PeopleSoft. Human Resources will be the first module of PeopleSoft that’s implemented at the university. We’ll have to look at everything we do, question why we do these things, and determine if there are ways the new system can help us be more efficient with some of our
processes.

Columns: What else is new?
Brantley: We’ve just reorganized the responsibilities of our benefit counselors, and I think this will have a great impact on the service we provide. Our counselors have basically divided up the alphabet--so that I, Andy Brantley, have a counselor dedicated to my needs. Should my counselor happen to be out--on vacation, or whatever--another counselor can easily find my information and help me. All our counselors will know about all our programs, but we are also developing subject-matter experts on each benefit program.
In the next few months we will be implementing something called “Smart Ben.” It will give employees access to payroll and benefits information via a secure Web site. An employee can go in at any time and see benefit choices and paycheck deductions, or do “what if” scenarios. It can also be accessed from home.
The idea behind that--and many of the other things we’re doing--is to enable employees to access their information without being dependent on our HR staff to pull files or look up the information. I see an effective Human Resources function as being an enabler, as opposed to a disabler. When an individual seeks advice or a service from Human Resources, the response from us--within reason, obviously--should help that employee or that department head achieve what he or she needs to achieve.
Something else that we’re working on right now is a child-care survey. The initiative began last year, at the impetus of the University Council, to assess child-care needs on campus. We’ve developed a survey, and we’ll be using WebCT to gather information. WebCT is what is used for online courses, so employees can just log on, using the UGA MyID and complete the survey on line. With WebCT, the data can be transferred to an Excel spreadsheet, so we can quickly analyze it and provide input about what employees are saying are the greatest needs as they relate to child care. The feedback will help us determine where we go from here.

Columns: Many employees will be pleased to participate.
Brantley: There are many issues like this that need a close look, to evaluate employees’ perception of us as a family-friendly institution. In the next year we will be closely evaluating every one of our policies, comparing them to regents’ policies and determining whether we need to make revisions, whether our current policies are the best fit for UGA right now.

Columns: Are the health-insurance changes all absorbed?
Brantley: There is definitely going to be a period of transition as people learn to use the different health-care plans now offered. For the most part, people are becoming more accustomed to how the plans work. We have been collecting employee concerns about the prescription drug coverage and relaying those to the board of regents, so that as the new plan is negotiated for next year our representatives at the board of regents will be aware of our employees’ concerns.
We will continue to provide updates and training with regard to health insurance. Ongoing communication is an important component for us--that our role doesn’t end when open enrollment ends. This commitment is one of the reasons that we held the open forums in January and February. Video recordings of the sessions are on our Web site now, and we also have videos that can be shipped across campus or across the state.

Columns: People don’t always realize that they need to attend such a meeting until questions arise later, so the Web is a great tool.
Brantley: There’s more need now to communicate via the Web and other electronic resources. Our employment site--just the employment site--had over 64,000 hits last month. You can imagine the number of hits that our benefits site received in October, November and December last year. Many employees want to be able to help themselves, to the extent possible, with routine questions. There will always be helpful, friendly voices and faces in Human Resources, but we know it is not always convenient for an employee to call or stop by between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. We welcome any suggestions for enhancing services.
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Published by University of Georgia News Service.
Beth Roberts, Columns editor; Juliett Dinkins, Columns managing editor;
Janet Beckley, Columns art director; Peter Frey, Columns photo editor.
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