Making my way to our beautiful campuses every day has shaped my daily routine for over 24 years – first as an undergraduate student, then as a graduate student and later as an employee in both service facing and academic roles. Wearing these many hats has offered countless opportunities to work with, engage, and collaborate with undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff and faculty from every corner of campus.
I choose to build my career at the U of A because I’m energized by students and colleagues who make it their commitment to lead and support excellence in teaching and learning, discovery and citizenship. It is a collaborative and shared commitment. Our graduate students not only serve as a primary point of teaching contact to some 40,000 undergraduate students, but they also drive the research enterprise at the U of A and dedicate themselves to their own development as researchers and scholars. Our faculty support this work and distinguish the U of A as one of the finest research and teaching institutions in Canada and worldwide. Dedicated staff work to make all of this happen – and without whom we simply could not meet our teaching and research mandate.
In the last few years, our community has experienced a lot of change. A global pandemic in parallel with new leadership, budget retrenchments, and the subsequent organizational restructuring thrust us into ways of working that were unfamiliar, confusing, and at times frustrating. We all experienced new challenges in different ways– how to go about our day-to-day work, how to best collaborate with one another and maintain human connections, how to conduct our research, and how to meet our shared commitment to provide students with an outstanding education.
Amid these many challenges, though, we also learned a lot. Some of what we learned has and will continue to permanently shape how we go about our work. It’s true that a lot of what we learned was borne out of necessity to adapt, but amid all of this I continue to witness the heartfelt desire and commitment to move our mission, vision and values forward and to imagine what it means for every individual on this campus to lead with purpose.
In March 2022, I was asked to conduct a campus-wide needs analysis to examine training our campus community considered most critical in our current context. As a senior consultant with Organizational Development, Human Resources, Health, Safety and Environment, working directly with and learning from employees not only drives my work, but also excites me. It fuels my energy, motivation and enthusiasm to continue what I do, and it reminds me why I choose to work at the U of A.
Imagining what a workplace skills training program could look like and mean for our campus was no easy task. Supported by my Organizational Development and HR Service Partner colleagues, and committed to the service excellence principle– “build with, not for”-- the engagement process was extensive and included surveys, conversations, focus groups and feedback sessions. For me, this process reconfirmed what I had already gathered in my time on this campus: our staff and faculty are generous, thoughtful individuals who care about their work and about this organization. Our community came together to support the investigation into the skills we most need. Staff and faculty were co-creators in the curriculum building process, giving me confidence that the workplace skills training HRHSE will launch will be impactful, practical, and will support staff and faculty in their day to day workplace realities.
As a result of this analysis, I am pleased to introduce the Workplace Skills initiative. Six new sessions address the most immediate needs our campus members identified. Drawing on current research, key focus areas, and delivered by subject matter experts, the workplace skills curriculum will help participants to be more effective communicators; demonstrate personal efficacy; generate collaborations that highlight the diversity of our campus members; approach questions and solutions innovatively; and translate their work into a hybrid context. I believe building and refining these skills will help to address our current challenges, to navigate future questions, to meet our goals and to drive our vision forward in striving for excellence. I am immensely grateful to the many campus community members who supported our big thinking and who held us accountable to create a training curriculum designed and heavily influenced by employees.
The first workshop – Communicating with Impact – is on October 27, and workshops run through March 2. These workshops will be complemented by Management Intensive, a new program (borne out of further discussions as part of the initial analysis) that will be available in Winter 2023 to address the needs of supervisors as they navigate day-to-day operations, propel operational goals forward and build high performing, unstoppable teams.
One University is an ambitious direction. It will require us to work together in respectful, collaborative ways, for us to collectively leverage our strengths, and to build new skills and behaviours that will lead us forward. It’s time to be future focused to ensure we can accomplish our goals. Whether you are an academic administrator, a groundskeeper, frontline staff, researcher, educator or anything in between–now more than ever, our current context requires us to deepen and build transferable workplace skills.
I invite you to immerse yourself in this opportunity to engage, learn and apply critical reflection to your work, and to champion your participation in workplace skills training.
Learn more about Workplace Skills curriculum, sessions and facilitators, and register in upcoming workshops.
About Deanna
Deanna is a Senior Consultant with Organizational Development in Human Resources, Health, Safety and Environment (HRHSE). She is an alumni of the U of A having completed a Bachelor of Arts–Honours, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music. In her role as Senior Consultant, she oversees the learning pillar where, in addition to the workplace skills initiative, she is leading the pilot for the new U of A Onboarding Program. Prior to her role with HRHSE, Deanna was the Senior Educational Curriculum Developer for the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. In this role she led and collaborated on educational initiatives that have distinguished the U of A in graduate education, including the Ethics and Academic Citizenship Requirement –Canada’s first graduate student Indigenous content requirement. Throughout her work, Deanna has led with purpose by helping to drive positive change through collaborative educational initiatives that are grounded in principles of citizenship, excellence, and innovation. When Deanna is not engaged in this work, she is busy being the proud mom to her two teenage children and singing in the award winning chamber choir, Chronos Vocal Ensemble.