Our mission is to create a culture where our people thrive and excel.
Who we are and what we do
IANR is working to be the world leader in food, fuel and water and we are here to help make that happen. We offer tools and support to IANR staff and faculty in the areas of classification and compensation, recruitment and selection, onboarding, payroll management, performance management and development, employee relations, rewards and recognition, and learning and development. As a part of the Finance and Personnel team, we focus on continuously improving our HR and Payroll operations and programs.
We are committed to creating a culture that encourages engagement, empowerment and innovation. This new focused effort is called INSPIRE. Through INSPIRE, our people will feel valued by IANR and rewarded and recognized for their contributions.
Why INSPIRE?
We are in a period of unprecedented growth. With increased faculty and research activities we need to ensure we have systematically addressed the staff needed to support and sustain this activity. We need a redefinition of roles, responsibilities and a new model that can accommodate growth. We need a way to promote our good staff employees. Staff need to know that the University values them and they are important and critical to its success.
We spend considerable time and effort managing our financial resources, why shouldn’t we spend as much or more time managing our human resources. Maybe if we do a better job on the front end we could save time fixing problems. Human resources make up 80 plus percent of the budget and people spend the remaining portion of the budget. It is people that make or break an organization. We must invest in them.
We have three core principles that support and encourage a strengths-based culture at IANR:
- Align to our Mission: Every person will understand the value of their position and how they contribute to the IANR mission. We value creativity, innovation and adaptability.
- Foster a Spirit of Collaboration: We do our best work in a spirit of collaboration and transparency. We will break down barriers between faculty and staff and work to strengthen our community.
- Invest in our People: We will help people develop and reach their full potential by recognizing and leveraging individual strengths.
Our priorities are:
- Performance Development: We are moving from an assessment/evaluation to more frequent and meaningful conversations between employees and managers. We are piloting our new approach now and with plans to roll out the new process to rest of IANR soon.
- Team Development Conversations: IANR is committed to adopting a strengths-based development approach to ensure our employees feel fully engaged in the work they do, and to help teams operate most effectively. Your team can embark on the StrengthsFinder journey to learn more about individual filters and ways to work better together.
- Manager Training/Toolkit: We have created a quick guide on IANR pay increase options. We are creating a tool kit of resources and best practices on how to manage people.
- New Employee Onboarding: In partnership with City HR, we are creating a comprehensive onboarding and orientation program for our new employees. We want all employees to feel welcome and understanding how they will uniquely contribute to the team.
- Employee Relations: We provide support in conflict resolution, coaching services and assistance with staff performance improvement plans.
- Staff Optimization: A comprehensive evaluation of IANR’s staff resources is being conducted to determine if opportunities exist for more effective utilization of our resources in order to meet the long-term needs of administrators, faculty and managers.
- Business Operations: We are working to streamline and simplify the class/comp processes to provide more flexibility to managers and empower HR staff to make decisions. This will create efficiencies and reduce turnaround time.
- Open Communication about ideas, issues and concerns: Openly talk about what is working well and areas where we can improve helps to create a culture that encourages engagement, empowerment and innovation.