Other Committees Announcement - December 28, 2021

Concerns had been expressed that we are not providing enough opportunities for staff to participate on committees across the system. To address these concerns, Leadership Team decided to request an inventory of all committees we have had in the system. Risa Jensen-Jones and Tricia Andrews worked with Larry White to develop and analyze this inventory. Our goal was to see who is serving and how often they have served in the last two years, in hopes that moving forward we can provide opportunities to those who have not had an opportunity to serve or opportunity to serve recently. A summary of our findings is below. A full report of our findings and recommendations is attached along with (a) a list of Committees that were active in 2021 and (b) a list of committee members by committee. We anticipate that now that we have a process for reviewing this information, we should be able to complete this review annually and report the findings to staff.

Executive Summary

Our library system has a large number of committees with the appearance of having a small number of people and locations involved. What we have found is that managers are more highly represented that frontline staff, some locations have disproportionately higher participation than others, and full-time staff are the primary participants. People participating on one committee are more likely to volunteer and be selected to be on other committees. Barriers to participation are a lack of awareness of opportunities, scheduling/time commitments, and not being asked to serve. Potential improvements to the process includes increasing transparency in calls for participation, providing a list of active workgroups, and providing recommendations on how to encourage broader participation across the organization.

Recommendations

Based on all of the feedback provided, we have established some detailed proposals in Appendix A of goal metrics, standards for having broader representation, process to call and select participants, and transparency in purpose, participants, and outcomes. Highlights of those recommendations follow:

• Define a committee/workgroup for the purpose of this evaluation:
  
  • For Metropolitan Library System, a group of staff working on system-wide projects, who were appointed or assigned, to work across various departments to complete a specific function/task and approved by a member of Leadership Team. 
• While committees do not need to be approved by the entire Leadership Team, a member of that team needs to be aware of the group to be formed and its purpose. There will be times that Leadership Team as a whole will need to establish or approve of a committee’s formation.
• When seeking approval to form a committee, ensure that consistent information is provided in the request.
• Make a call for participants by email and intranet post using the same information in the request to form the group as well as how to volunteer.
• Staff volunteering for a committee will provide information about any current committees they are on, whether they have supervisor approval, and why they want to serve on this committee.
• As a system, we can empower local supervisors to allow staff to telework specifically to participate in a system committee to provide more opportunities for those who do not work Monday-Friday 8am-5pm. Human Resources is currently working on making this possible in Paycom. For further information if this applies to you, please contact your supervisor/director/department head.
• Follow the call for participants with an email and intranet post announcing who was selected.
• Prepare the participants for the work with expectations, goals, and deadlines for the group.
• Keep the Leadership Team member or group informed of progress as appropriate.
• Complete the work with a summary of the goal and outcome of the group.

Edit: The committees listed in the report only include committees that were created before the 2nd survey closed to staff input on July 20, 2021. Unfortunately, it took longer to finalize the report than was hoped. Future reports, should they continue, should not take as long to finalize from the time of employee input.