Preliminary Recommendations
The CUL Task Force on Inclusiveness was formed in October 2008 in response to the resolution passed by the Academic Assembly on September 8, 2008, and to findings in the ClimateQUAL survey and the report of the Strategic Alignment Group. The Task Force was charged with recommending strategies to achieve greater staff inclusiveness throughout CUL. All members of the task force (five academic and eight non-academic staff) were individuals who had responded to a library-wide request for volunteers. Several groups have wrestled with the issues of inclusiveness and engagement in CUL in recent years, including the Innovation Without Burnout Group and, most recently, the Strategic Alignment Group (SAG). In the reports of these groups, we see recommendations and options to make our organization—its policies, practices, and structures—more inclusive in order to allow individuals to be more engaged, productive, and innovative. We define inclusion and engagement in these terms:
Inclusion: Organizational climate created by policies, practices, and structures that encourage individuals to feel that they are valued members of the larger whole and thus increase their ability to contribute to the organization.
Engagement: Active participation and involvement of individuals in applying their skills to contribute to the goals of the organization.
If we are successful in removing organizational barriers to inclusion—those that limit or diminish staff contributions—we hope and expect staff to become more engaged. This is the basis for the working definition of inclusiveness that is part of our charge:
To provide all CUL staff with the opportunity to
- enhance their understanding of how CUL operates in the context of the greater information environment and CUL’s goals and priorities
- be heard on issues important to CUL staff and the library
- be more engaged in the life of the broader library and university communities
While the task force was ramping up, SAG was wrapping up its excellent report, An Opportunity to Challenge and Change the Status Quo (rev. 10/23/08). The report lays out a series of options for engaging CUL staff in the implementation of the library’s goals and objectives and identifies “aspects of our culture/working style that could be enhanced to improve overall results.” In identifying ways to enhance CUL’s organizational climate, communication, information gathering, assessment, rewards, and structure, SAG is, in fact, promoting inclusiveness.
Shortly after the release of the SAG report, the task force held a brainstorming session to generate strategies for achieving inclusiveness in CUL. Not surprisingly, many of the ideas on our list were already embodied in the SAG report. Rather than duplicate SAG’s work, the task force culled a list of potential strategies we had brainstormed to eliminate those that SAG had already identified. We endorse the recommendations put forth by SAG, and we intend to provide SAG with input as it develops an action plan.
In this report, although we have identified a few specific strategies to enhance inclusiveness that are not mentioned in the SAG report, we have focused our attention on two specific recommendations related to the issue that most directly resulted in the formation of our group.
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