Meeting Notes - April 11, 2022

Relationships Committee Meeting: Monday, April 11 at 3:00pm

Present: Justina Mattos, Makamae Kamaka-Mauhili, and Kathleen Baumgardner

Meeting purpose: Action Plan work continues

Congratulations to Makamae for receiving the 2022 Mālama (Caring) Award at the Ka Lama Ku Leadership Awards Ceremony!

Committee members reviewed info regarding potential new members of the committee from the community. We identified several possible candidates. We chose two very strong candidates and one backup possibility. Kathleen will contact Julie to discuss.

Online Recognition System

7.1.1. Strategy 7: Nurture and strengthen campus relationships and campus culture. Action 1: Increase opportunities to express gratitude and celebrate success in large and small ways across campus. Deliverable 1: Communicated the work of campus groups/committees recognizing that the work was meaningful and acknowledging the impact or efforts that came to fruition.

Since the last meeting, Kathleen reached out to Cornell regarding their online system. They have a robust Appreciation Portal that they put in place with Awardco. They said they have been with them for almost 4 years and overall are very pleased with the system.

In the last two years, Cornell has seen an increase in usage and a steady progression of the platform gaining traction in our culture of recognition. They have about 19,000 users in the portal which include temporary employees, staff, union workers, and academic non-faculty and they have a small population of students in the portal, but their access is very limited. Mostly the portal is centered on staff – not students and faculty.

HR is doing all the day-to-day associated with the program. They said 50% of the work is managing the budget structures and coordinating with department units on their annual budget contributions and adhoc requests to add more points. They have a gift card-for-points component with the campus store or Amazon. The other 50% of the workload includes inquiries on usage of the portal, building out customized recognition programs, monitoring their service awards automated program, and staying up to date on new features.

The primary device used for the portal are computers. Awardco does not have an app, but they have a web based mobile friendly version of the platform. They provided me lots of info and I'm sure they will continue to help if we have more questions.

We discussed not using a complex system with prizes/rewards (gift cards, etc.), perhaps something we could build inhouse. We also discussed that effort 6.3.1. (Deliverable: Developed annual recognition of community organizations that support UH Hilo service learning and community engagement). Might it be possible to include the options for internal people to honor community members and send kudos emails to them through this system? Kathleen has been emailing with Brennan and he brought up several things to consider, including:

Could the Special Compensation Adjustment System and the 'APT Performance Award' be more readily used if either integrated into this new system or if it could trigger links to be sent to the supervisor after a stack of kudos pile up for an employee?
Who gets notifications of kudos? There are a lot of bosses and the bosses listed in the HR system may not be the actual person. Finding the boss for each person won’t always be easy.
It is strongly recommended that the system be used internally. Opening it to submissions from outside, may compromise the tool and open it to spam.

The committee discussed these issues above. Any way to encourage more award nominations is good. The kudos could be valuable for year-end awards. The boss issue may be stepped around if the person filling out the form has to enter the email of a supervisor. There was also a question about whether there could be a button on My UH Services.

We do like the idea of being able to send kudos messages to both internal people and external people. If there are external people who would like to send kudos, we would have to think of another option. We talked briefly about the University concierge, but that appears to be linked with FYE and it has a different type of focus.

Brennan said that he may be able to create a prototype. He is hoping that the work may benefit other UH campuses.

Online recognition system action items:

Kathleen will continue communicating with Brennan and pass along prototypes.

Wailau update

The idea: The purpose of Wailau events is to build connections across campus and with the wider community that go deeper than the roles we hold while honoring our complex, fragile and brave selves. In keeping with the meaning of Wailau, we will showcase five storytellers at each event - a UH faculty member, staff member, student, alum and a community member.

The spring episode of Wailau has been filmed and the library student workers are editing. There is one off-site taped story that has yet to be submitted. This episode may be a bit longer than others, as we are introducing our new hosts who will take over in the fall. Topic expert Julie Mitchell did an excellent job. The event premiere is Saturday, May 7, 2:00 pm.

We discussed the fall Wailau episode being presented live. The venue that appealed to the committee is CC301 (room capacity 125). It has an outside terrace. The acoustics are good. The event premiere could be staged a bit earlier than the last fall episode because editing would take place after the live premiere and livestream. CC301 has a dedicated sound system that we would want to test. The proposed schedule and photos of the venue in use can be found in this linked document. Practice would need to take place in the venue. If the event is live, we should spell this out during the application process. We could have food in this venue. Would the library students be able to manage the livestream or would this go through Blaine? The students are training on new equipment. The event would not be ticketed, but we could encourage attendees to complete an RSVP so we can gauge attendance in advance. Would University Radio Hilo (URH) be interested in broadcasting this episode?

Wailau action items:

Justina will ask Glenn for the storyteller and topic expert headshots so Kathleen can add them to the Wailau website.
Kathleen will email Braden about the next theme.
Justina will touch base with Hiapo and Dayva about the Wailau Instagram account to make sure they are promoting the upcoming episode.
Justina will complete a draft schedule for the fall episode (see link that includes draft schedule and photos).