Message from Mark Schmelz, Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer:
Jump to respectful workplace notice
Winter term is well underway! January is always a busy month, and recent winter weather has added an unanticipated set of challenges for all of us. I hope you have been able to address any hardships the weather presented you. As always, I am grateful for your contributions to UO’s students, mission, and vision. I’m also appreciative of the intentional actions you take to create a welcoming and inclusive work environment for each other every day, and especially as nature creates unexpected burdens for us.
We send the respectful workplace notice each year to remind us of our obligations to each other. The full text of the notice is below, but I wanted to highlight some key points:
- Our jobs can be challenging, but this never gives us the right to attack one another. Yelling, harassment, and intimidation are all violations of our respectful workplace expectations. We should never act in ways that negatively affect our colleagues’ sense of safety and belonging.
- Supervisors and heads need to be attentive. Leadership is the foundation of the employee experience. Supervisors and department heads strongly influence employees’ sense of belonging and well-being and are responsible for modeling inclusive and respectful behavior. The university expects leaders to be attentive to interpersonal dynamics in their workgroups and address inappropriate behavior promptly.
- Equity and inclusion are a collaborative effort. We have a collective responsibility to foster a sense of belonging for all our employees: research and instructional faculty, classified employees, officers of administration, graduate employees, and student employees. I encourage every unit to brainstorm and then implement ideas big and small to dismantle barriers, challenge biases, and unite us just a bit more.
- If you are or have been a target of inappropriate behavior, you have a variety of options to reach out to the university community for support. Talk with your supervisor, and/or contact one of the resources listed in this message.
Finally, I’d like to encourage you to connect with each other on a personal level. This is one of the simplest and most tangible ways to foster belonging. We won’t all like everyone we work with, and some people prefer not to have close friends at work, but I bet you can think of a time when a colleague’s warmth fostered a more effective working relationship. Let’s each find at least one opportunity to create that feeling for someone we work with.
It’s to our personal and professional advantage to see, hear, and welcome each other. Please take a few minutes to read the notice below and think about how you will operationalize it – and go beyond it to not only avoid inappropriate behavior, but to create positive and inclusive interactions that help UO thrive. I also encourage you to watch one of the short videos in the sidebar, read one of the articles, or review the employee engagement guide, to get yourself thinking about belonging and how to create even more of it in our workplaces.
Thank you for helping to foster inclusive workplaces in your units and workgroups. If you have questions or concerns, please contact one or more of the resources listed at the end of this message.
-Mark
