Guiding Principles
NYU's HR Policies Assessment Task Force ("HRPAT") is charged with two objectives. The first is to evaluate and offer recommendations for improving NYU's policies, guidelines, and procedures (both within and outside the United States). The second is to clarify and designate appropriate responsibility and process for ongoing maintenance and communication of NYU's policies, procedures, and guidelines post HRPAT's intervention.
As our first step towards meeting this charge, we asked for input (needs, wants, and wish lists) from the NYU community as surveyed through employee's representatives (i.e., centralized and decentralized HR Officers, AMC, Faculty Council, etc.), NYU subject matter experts, and we reviewed relevant information about our primary competition within the Ivy plus group.
Next, we identified the following "Guiding Principles" for this process.
NYU's policies, guidelines, and procedures should help NYU to achieve its goal of attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining the best and the brightest faculty, administrators, and staff by:
- Facilitating an environment that supports the university's mission
- Recognizing the need for consistency — across and within schools and departments within and outside the United States — to the greatest extent possible — while maintaining flexibility to accommodate specialized needs arising from time to time
- Make unambiguous distinctions between policies, guidelines, and procedures
- Reflecting what current and prospective employee's value
- Remaining competitive with peer universities and schools
- Ensuring that policies and guidelines are narrowly owned and broadly administered
- Keep authorizations to a minimum and as close to the authorizing unit as possible
- Ensure that authorizers' responsibilities and the process of identifying and/or changing authorizing entities are clear and provide value
- Effectively communicating policies and guidelines and ensuring that they:
- Use clear language
- Provide easy access to get policy information via a central repository
- Provide a "place to go" to review policy updates and changes and to get clarification on questions relating to the application of a policy
- Continuing to promote a diverse, non-discriminatory environment that encourages and supports professional growth and well-being
- Reinforcing our shared interest in protecting and growing the University's interests and investments. This includes, but is not limited to, our shared interest in minimizing litigation and ensuring competitiveness with other comparable organizations in the recruitment of faculty, administrators, and staff