All right, great. Hi, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Hope you're doing well. My name's Ashley Privet. I'm from the University of Virginia. I'm joining you here from Richmond, Virginia, which is about an hour away from Charlottesville. I'm excited to chat with you guys a little bit about UVA's hybrid and remote work journey, but also to learn from you all about what you're doing in your shops. So this is not just a straight webinar. This is going to be a conversation. I hope you've come with thoughts and questions. We want to lean on you and want to learn more about what you're doing in your shop, what's working, what's challenging you. But let's go ahead and get started. Got people joining right now. Hope you're having a great day. So I'm going to share my slides really quickly. Hang on just a second. So if you were at CASE District 3 last year, you maybe joined my presentation on UVA's hybrid and remote work journey. That presentation was sort of the culmination of a few years of work that we've done here at UVA to solidify our flexible work environment. I'll be doing a part two at the District 3 conference that's coming up in two weeks. But before that, we just wanted to share a little bit about how we're doing, and then open up the conversation to understand how it's working at your shop. What are you hoping to implement in the future? What's working for you? What's challenging you? So let's just set the stage a little bit about how things are going here at UVA. So a little bit about the University of Virginia. We were founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson. We're located in Charlottesville, Virginia. And there are about 500 people who do advancement work across grounds. And grounds is the fancy way that we say campus. But those 500 people work in a variety of different units. So we're pretty complex when compared to other schools. For whatever reason, we are founded in a way that about half the folks work in university advancement or sort of central advancement. And the other half work for our different fundraising foundations. There are about 19 different fundraising foundations at UVA. Those include things like the Virginia Athletics Foundation, the UVA Alumni Association, the Darden School of Business Foundation, the College Foundation, et cetera. So those folks have their own advancement staffs. But together, we come together, and we call ourselves the advancement community at UVA. For the purposes of our conversation today, we're really just going to be talking about university advancement. So how university advancement works at UVA in terms of its flexible work environment. Also, just as a point of reference, we launched a $5 billion campaign in 2019. And I was just talking with Jacob a moment ago. We actually surpassed our goal on December 22, 18 months in advance of our campaign ending date. And we are going to keep raising money, of course. So we are hoping to finish our campaign in 2025. And we'll see where we get. So right now, when you think about how people in university advancement are working, and there's about 270 or so people in university advancement, 27% of those folks are what we consider geographically remote. So those are folks like myself, where we live more than 60 miles away from our campus. The majority of us live further away than 60 miles. I'm kind of in that close range. But we actually have folks as far away as Hawaii working for the University of Virginia's University Advancement Office. About 27% are what I would call remote local, meaning that they work remotely the majority of the time from their home office. But they do live locally. So they could come into the office and they might come in occasionally. And then we have what we would consider sort of a traditional remote. So they're coming into the office two or three days a week on a regular basis. And that represents about 37% of our staff. And then lastly, about 9% of our staff sort of work in a traditional manner, coming into the office regularly almost all five days a week. I mentioned that we had staff as far away as Hawaii. So we actually have staff in 22 states plus Virginia, coming from as far away as Hawaii. But all over the East Coast, as you can see, but also over onto the West Coast towards Arizona, Colorado, Texas. And we're adding remote staff all the time. So you may have heard that we have a workplace philosophy that is work where your work will be best supported. This is something that we actually developed early on in our hybrid journey. And it's interesting because it does not mean work where you want to work every day. It doesn't mean wear your pajama pants and work from home every single day. It means that we have to think about how we're going to work. It means that we have to think about the work that we have to do and where it can be best supported. Just as a quick example, last week was our week of learning, where we had about 400 folks coming together for essentially a conference for all advancement staff at UVA. And the week before that, in preparation for the event, we needed to come in and get prepared. We needed to make sure that we had our packing lists, our name tags, all of the things that we needed to be ready for the event, something we really had to do from the office and really couldn't do from home. So we trust our folks to consider the work that they need to do and then work from the place that best supports that work. It really is a joint preposition. We provide the trust. We hope that people will make great choices. Sometimes we do have to talk a little bit about those choices, but for the most part, it seems to really work very well. The other part of this, of course, is that we have to think about performance by outcomes and not necessarily attendance. And this gets talked a lot about whenever you talk about remote work. Prior to the pandemic, I think perhaps sometimes as managers, we might have thought about people's performance as it relates to attendance. Did they show up on time? Did they work the whole day? Were they at their desk? Were they answering emails? And maybe not really thinking about the outcomes as related to their actual role. And so working this way has forced us to really think about, what are the requirements of the job? What does it mean to be successful in the job? And then what are the goals related to that? And I think that that's really improved our management. It's also improved our engagement amongst employees. So we're going to launch a little poll here, and we'd like to hear from you guys about how you all are approaching remote work in your shops. So if you wouldn't mind just taking a moment to complete the poll. Okay, so, Jacob, do you want to share those results with everybody, if we aren't already? It looks like we're seeing about 14% of folks who are fully flexible. I know there's some UVA folks on the call, so you might be skewing those numbers a bit. The majority of folks are working in a somewhat flexible environment, so hybrid, but with weekly in-office requirements, about 82% of you are saying that. Nobody on the call has a fully in-office work style. That's interesting that nobody is in that situation. We do see that there's a couple of people who have other, so if you wrote other, if you want to elaborate in the chat, that'd be great, so we can just learn a little bit more about what you meant by that. Okay, so, Jacob, can you share our second poll question? So, as you think about the future of remote work in your shop, are you hoping to maintain your current flexible work environment? Are you hoping to provide more flexibility to your employees? Are you hoping to go back to a more in-office experience? So again, for those of you guys who wrote as other can somebody post in the poll or come off mute and share a little bit about what you meant by other. Hey Ashley, it's Kenny Melvin here at Washington and Lee University. Hey Kenny, how are you? Doing well. Hey, I didn't submit other, but I was answering this from actually looking down at my team and not specifically me because we're kind of different. I was 100% remote starting in 2018, so way before the pandemic. You know this, but I wanted to share it with everyone, but it's not like that for our entire team. Right, so not everybody on your team has that same flexibility that you have. It was based on the position that you have. It's probably, I would think now the majority of our team are on campus, but not fully on campus. They probably get a couple days off here and there, but there's probably about three of us that are fully remote. Right, okay. And that was the recruitment strategy for Exactly, that's exactly what it was. So I just wanted to share that. I know that's not answering your other question, but. Okay, okay. Thank you. Hi Kenny, it's good to see you. Anybody else want to come off mute? Yeah, my name's Jen. I'm with University of Florida and your first poll question I answered kind of other only because our central offices do hybrid and have hybrid schedules. I'm a fully remote employee. I'm actually based in Illinois. So we have remote employees all over the place, but we're trying to work on our units and some of our development units to be more open to remote, especially since development officers travel a lot anyways. So that's kind of where we're focusing, where we're seeing some units still know in office they want their staff there on campus kind of when they're not traveling. Sure, yeah, definitely. Okay, well, thank you guys for that. Oh, somebody else. Well, David Churchill, UNC Chapel Hill. I'll put other, we're providing a good deal of flexibility. I don't know if we're looking to expand it or retract that, but figure out what works best for each team because each team's work differently. So for instance, my gift processing team, I'm need them more of an in-person presence in a lot of cases, opposed to maybe our prospect management research. I mean, so it's having a policy that may not be consistent, or how do we have consistent that provides the flexibility within teams themselves, opposed to having one standard across the board? Sure, yeah. So I think the challenge there is then how do you get an equity, you know? So you may have some challenges with folks pushing back on you a bit there. Exactly, and I would push back. It doesn't have to be equitable. True, true, absolutely. All right, well, thank you guys for sharing. It's good to learn a little bit more about where you all sit. Let's go into our next little section here. Great. Okay, so one of the things that we've done to help us get where we are is regular feedback through employee surveys. So we actually launched our very first survey in 2020. It was really focused on remote and hybrid work. We wanted to check in with our staff to make sure that they were doing okay, and that has continued. We did our last survey in August of 2023, and we asked some questions that really hit at the work we're doing and helped us sort of solidify our remote work environment. One of the questions that we asked is the second one. So how much does the ability to work remotely weigh in your decision to work for university advancement? And more than 50% said that it was critical to my continued employment, meaning that it is the number one thing that is driving my decision to work in university advancement. And for 30% of the folks, it wasn't critical, but it's very important to their decision. So now you're talking about 80% of staff in university advancement that the ability to work remotely and have flexibility is playing a key role in their decision to continue to work for us. And you guys probably in your shots are feeling the same way. Retention is paramount. We want to keep great people. And so this was a big piece of data that was helpful to our leadership in terms of really sort of doubling down on remote and hybrid work. Our employees also have reported a really positive impact on work-life balance. That actually started in our 2020 survey and stayed kind of the same throughout all the surveys. And in our most recent survey too, there was some great feedback about being motivated due to the trust that's being placed in them in terms of being able to make choices about how and where they work. Are you guys doing surveys? I'd be curious to hear from some folks about whether or not you're doing surveys of your staff and what are you hearing from them about remote and hybrid work? Quiet out there. Has anybody heard any negative feedback through their surveys to the flexible environments that you're providing. I'll jump in. I'm Angela Mills I work with the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and one of my colleagues Emily Hutchins is also on here. We've gone through immense. I would say, our, our team is almost double within the college. In the last three years, which is amazing growth and excitement, but the flip side to it is our physical space has not grown at all. And so we had to figure out how to make a physical space that did not grow fit a team that did grow. And so when we initially came back. We were doing hoteling. I am the exception to that I was without an assistant director and I serve as the alumni director so they gave me a lot of leeway but it was very interesting to watch colleagues, and even myself. I'm not in the office can someone use my space and how do we fix this and there weren't certain days and we were all sort of doing our thing. And so, in the last seven months we have been exploring how to be hoteling with sort of assigned spaces, which didn't really work, because the anxiety that was connected to that. And what we found through our surveys in the summer was that there are some people that really want to be in the office. They have small children they they feel that they need to be there. One of the most interesting responses was from a late 20s colleague who said, I'm the social media manager but I want to be in an office every day, which was not our assumption and then thought would be in the office were like, I never want to be an office, and so we've actually in the last two months, really worked hard we spent three hours one morning, developing out of schedule to figure out how cubicles could be shared and how offices could be shared, and how to use a swing space and the conference room in a way, because that fits what was being asked, and what they asked for was an actual office space that was designated as there's. And so what came out of that was really interesting, which is everyone has an assigned space, but everyone shares an office, they just don't share an office, every day. And so at the most they share an office two days a week. And so I would say the anxiety level in the past three weeks has gone from like a 50 to a 10 that everybody knows what they're where they're going, if they're trying to find someone they can find it. But the most surprising thing is everyone seems so much happier. And I think when we started this we never would have thought that shared offices would be something that would be what was the most wanted thing and we only got there because we asked our people what they wanted. And I would say our morale was the most challenge going into that survey. And Emily, do you want to add anything to that. I would just reiterate that I was surprised by the survey results and the folks that I thought would be more comfortable working remote actually wanted a place of belonging and so with the solution that Angela shared was a way to accommodate all the different needs but then also we have a requirement of working on two days in the office. And the only way to do it was a set schedule so we have, we have space like 11 spaces but over 20 on our team, it was a logistical challenge to figure it out. But so far everything's happy. The survey was key to understanding that thing though. Yeah. And it's astronomical the difference between three days required in the office to two days required in the office, it was as if a dark cloud just completely lifted. There you go. It is much easier to find outfits for just two days, then for three days and not in the office I agree. I think getting feedback from people is really key we desk hotel at UVA. And we do have some folks who have assigned offices we have assigned offices to our leaders so if you're an AVP or above you have a set space. We also allow people to do recurring reservations so if you are a person who enjoys working from the office. You can make a recurring reservation so that you kind of have the same spot, all the time it's not your office necessarily but you know that you have that space set aside for you. You know it works and it and it also challenges us at the same time, there are a lot of people who are perfectly happy coming in, once in a while and then finding a desk to work from and working from that desk. We do find sometimes that the software is a barrier so we had a software for a couple of years that was a little clunky. We changed recently back in the summertime to a new software which allowed us to have QR codes right outside the offices, which makes it really easy for you to just scan and see if the office is available and then book it right there that has helped from having as many people just sort of squatting in an office but that does, we still do have people who refuse to book the space and they just use it, which only becomes a problem if someone else has actually booked the space so we talked a lot about being And, you know, making sure that you are taking care of your colleagues by booking space in advance, but it seems to work for us, and it allows us to have that flexibility, you know, where you're not holding an office for somebody who's only working a couple of days a week. How about everybody else? Is anybody desk hoteling? And if so, you know, are you using software or do you have a schedule kind of like what Angela described at Virginia Tech? Let's actually, maybe let's revisit the survey idea. Angela mentioned getting some shocking survey results. So people who you thought wanted to be working from home, let you know that they wanted to be working from the office. I'm curious, did anybody else run into, if you've done a survey like that, or a survey about remote or hybrid work, have you gotten any results that surprised you? Okay, so either people are not doing surveys, or they're doing surveys that have questions that we already know the answers to, and their surveys are just validating those answers. Both of those things are okay, I guess. All right, well, let's move along, and if we have any more thoughts about employee feedback, you know, please feel free to put something in the chat or pipe up with an answer here. So a few things that helped us early on that were big wins. The first thing was that we had two spaces that we were leasing outside of our main office space. Our health systems development folks were actually leasing space in the building next door to us, and we also had our call center, our phone-a-thon, at a leased space. And so going into, coming, I guess, in 2021, we were able to let go of those leased spaces, and because we didn't require as much space in our main office building, we were able to move those departments in, and that saved us about $500,000 a year in rent. So that was a big win for us. Another big win for us, because we have this space and can kind of have open space occasionally, we've allowed other departments to share space with us. So the first early on was actually a big win for the community. The Albemarle County Health Department was looking for some space to put up a call center to help people schedule vaccination appointments, and they didn't have any space that they could work from, so they ended up using some of our space at our main office building on Grounds. But more recently, just this month actually, we have let a department from our Batten School of Leadership move in. Their building is currently under construction and won't be finished for a couple of years, and they were looking for some space for their administrative department, so about 12 people. And they basically, up until this point, had their 12 people sort of scattered across about eight different spaces across Grounds, and that was really presenting some challenges for them. So we had the space, we were able to make an arrangement with them, and they moved in in January. So it's been a big win for us in terms of university partnerships. We also were able to increase our recruiting footprint. Kenny mentioned that, working for W&L. He lives in Richmond and probably wouldn't be moving to Lexington, but in the same way, we have people who are working for UVA who don't live in Charlottesville, who may not have ever wanted to move to Charlottesville, but were really excited to take a job with the University of Virginia and stay in their hometowns where they're already rooted, where they already have community. So it's sort of a win-win for us. It's been a really great move. I mentioned about 27% of our staff are geographically remote, and we feel like we've been able to recruit some of the best and brightest folks to our team because of this. We also were able to retain some staff who needed to move, and I'm sure this has happened to you guys, where you had great, talented staff whose partners got different jobs, who needed to be near their aging parents, and needed to move and had to leave you in the past, and we don't have to do that now. So we've actually retained staff who have been in that situation, and that's been a real win for us as well. And then I mentioned earlier, all along, even during the very early part of the pandemic to now, we've hit and surpassed our fundraising goals year over year over year to the tune of raising $5 billion, 18 months in advance of our campaign goal. We crossed that bridge on December 22nd of this last year, still have 18 months to go. We'll end up wherever we end up by June 30, 2025. So I'd love to hear, for those of you guys, a lot of you are working in flexible work environments. It sounds like 82% of you said that you had hybrid work environments. What were some of the wins that you saw on your teams as it relates to hybrid and remote work? So Angela had mentioned being able to save some space and get people in. Mary Hall. Hi, Mary. Hi, thanks so much. Mary Catherine Hall from Duke University in rainy Durham, North Carolina today. I've been thinking a lot about the survey concept and then also what people are enjoying and consider successful. When we first came back, it was three days a week in office and two days with the remote option. But we have maximum flexibility for choosing which days we each wanted to be in office. And it turns out people hated that because the number one thing that most people said that they wanted out of being in the workplace was to see their colleagues. And there would be times where I would go in my three days and I'd sit in my corner upstairs and I wouldn't see anyone. So after several surveys, we switched to two days in office, which shout out for two versus three. That's so much better for us. But we also moved to everyone in the centralized organization is in office on the same day. It's Tuesdays right now. And then each team picks an additional day that their team is in office. And so that way, if what people were expressing is that they wanted to see their colleagues, we've now created an environment where it's unlikely you'll come into the office on a quote usual day and not see anyone. The downside of that is that hoteling wouldn't work for us under the current model because everybody's here on Tuesdays and most teams have chosen Wednesdays for their secondary day. Yeah. So have you guys, just to follow up on that, on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, you're not seeing maximum capacity at your space. Have you all thought about what that might mean or how do you, I guess, be good stewards of university space, which we're all always short on? I can't speak to what our leadership has really been thinking, but I will say that we're in an interesting process now. Like some folks have mentioned in the chat, we have an annual agreement of we're going to continue remote work, hybrid work under this structure, renewable every July. But we have a mix of on-campus space and then some leased space in downtown Durham. And while you could certainly imagine it might be a cost savings to release that lease space, I have no idea what the terms of the lease are, the timeline for that decision. And our on-campus space is significantly smaller than our downtown space. So if we were to ever let go of the lease space, I don't know what hoteling arrangement we'd work where it's five people per cubicle. So I know there's a lot of thinking, we've been growing, as people mentioned, so far growing enough that everybody still has a designated desk. But I think that's going to change soon. Yeah. What other wins have you guys seen at your offices since you've gone hybrid? I'll mention this, you already kind of touched on it, but recruitment, we were able to recruit a couple of GIF officers that we probably wouldn't have on a team if it wasn't for the option. Yeah. And no shade to Lexington, it's a great city, it's just not everybody wants to move there. You know, you're established and your kids are in school and you, you know, have friends where you are. And so it's great that you can kind of have the best of both worlds and live in a place you love, but work for a university that you love too. Yeah. I'll jump in, Ashley. Yeah. Hey, Lindsay. Hi, Lindsay Topping from Emory University. We are in a hybrid model at Emory and it greatly varies by team, but generally I would say we're about two days in the office, three days remote. And one of our big wins, I think, is we have a hoteling space and I get to work with so many people I would not normally have any interactions with. So my team likes to go in on Wednesdays in the middle of the week and we'll often have the college, nursing, medicine, folks who normally wouldn't be together conversing. So to me, that's been a big benefit getting to know more of my colleagues. Yeah. Yeah. I would say for me, you know, prior to the pandemic, I had an assigned office and it was in a space that was surrounded by my unit, my, the advancement operations. And I was all the way across the building from fundraisers or the engagement staff. And now because I get to pick my office every single time I work from there, it kind of depends on what kind of work I'm doing. So if I want, if I'm in a chatty mood and want to be with people, I go on the hall that a lot of folks from development or engagement are in. If I have to be a little bit quieter and get some heads down work done, there's a couple of spaces on our first floor that usually have the people don't work from as regularly. And I, I want to say a hide there, but I do a little bit get some work done that way. So it just depends on what you need the office for that day. Absolutely. And Wednesday is our most popular day. So it is also one of my least productive days. Everybody comes in. Absolutely. I think that's the interesting thing is I think we've all seen that the office serves a different purpose. You know, now that we're working in this flexible work environment it, it definitely has a much more social purpose and that's it. It's an important purpose because this is a relationship building business and you know, we need to form relationships with our colleagues to get this work done. We can't do it by ourselves. So that investment in relationships is important. But definitely that social time takes away from the heads down work that you might need to do from home. Right? So now you have options. The work that you might need to do, looking at spreadsheets or coming through data. That's great work to do from home, you know, meetings and, and meeting with other people, connecting with folks. That's great work to do from the office. So great. All right. Let's talk a little bit about policies. So the interesting thing about the University of Virginia is that University Advancement did not have a policy or a guideline for flexible work until just this fall. So all this time that we've been working remotely, we have been working, we had a, we had a return to office plan, but we didn't have a formal flexible work policy or guideline until the fall of 2023. So the university's policy essentially is quite broad and essentially allows departments to make decisions about how their staff work. And so we created a policy back in the fall and implemented that with our folks. And it covers a variety of things. It spells out our workplace philosophies. We talked about that earlier. What it is, what it isn't. You know, it is not a mandate that everyone can do whatever they want. It is really about putting trust in our staff to make great choices about how to get their work done. We cover our culture. We have a culture of trust, performance, and inclusion, and we talk a little bit about those in the guidelines. We also talk about our expectations for in-office work. So while we don't have daily expectations or weekly expectations around you being at work in Charlottesville, we do have annual expectations for you to attend our day and week of learning. And we can talk a little bit more about those in just a few minutes, but we do expect that you'll come to those two events. And we do pay for your travel if you do live remotely. And we also highly encourage our staff to come once a month for our collaboration days. And we'll talk a little bit more about what a collaboration day is later. But this policy was important to really be very clear about those expectations. So they're included in there, as well as some information about technology and equipment. You know, we had some challenges early on where we hired new folks and we provided them with a laptop, keyboard, and a mouse. And then there was this awkward moment where they were asking for additional supplies, things like monitors or other equipment that we weren't willing to provide. So we have made a decision early on that, you know, you outfit your home office. If you choose to work from your home office, then you outfit your home office with the equipment that you might need beyond a laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard. And we weren't being as transparent about that as we could have been. So this policy explains that. And we also share that information with folks who are in the middle of being recruited to UVA. And then lastly, we refer to our travel policy. And that comes into place when we think about these in-office requirements. So if you are geographically remote and have to travel back to grounds for an event, then we cover that in our travel policy. So all of that was really important to get us to, I think, where we are today, which is really solidly working in this flexible way. You know, prior to this, without having the guidelines, it felt sometimes a little squishy. And so having those guidelines really has helped us sort of solidify the work that we're doing. One of the other things that we did when we created these guidelines is we have an initial meeting with all new hires to talk about this. So as part of your onboarding, I meet with you in your first week, whether you're remote or not. So it doesn't matter how you'll be working. It's just this is our flexible work environment. We talk about the guidelines. And we also talk about tips for success in this environment. So even if you choose to work from the office every single day, you probably are working with people who work remotely or people who work in a hybrid style. And so what are the best ways to stay connected? What are the best ways to remain engaged, to understand what the goals are? And so we talk about that in that initial meeting. How many of you guys have policies that are specific to your shops? Or are you following the university's guidelines for flexible work? I'll chime in, Ashley. Hi, it's Erica Arroyo from University of Miami Office of Engagement, Associate VP. We have a university policy, but we also do have a division, you know, sort of guidelines, if you will. And then even further by department, we're sort of developing our best practices, if you will. We found in going to a hybrid schedule, and more recently having a shared space and hotel space, which we just went live with this week at the university in development alumni relations. Just, you know, simple things you think people would be courteous for their neighbors and, you know, taking conference calls on speakerphone and things of that nature, some best practices. We're creating cheat sheets of, you know, making sure your desk is nice and clean for the next person who comes in, those sorts of things. But certainly it's multi-tiered that we have by the department, by the division. And then ultimately the university does have protocol on how, you know, you should be working either remotely, hybrid or in-person, what that might look like. Great. Thank you, Erica. Appreciate that. Let's talk about, so internal communications. So one of the keys that we have really focused on to help us be successful in our hybrid and remote work is internal communications. You know, prior to the pandemic, we had a little newsletter. I created it. It's called Take Five and it had five bullets because it was called Take Five. And it basically just told you about upcoming trainings and things you might need to know about. During the pandemic, we increased the frequency of that to weekly. It was only really coming out monthly before that. So it comes out weekly. Our staff redesigned it, made it way better than I ever had it. And it has increased the coverage. So we had things like upcoming events, tips and tricks, information about our staff, you know, let's see what else is in there. Oh, cool things that are happening on grounds, cool things that are happening virtually. So things you can talk with your alumni and other constituents about. And so we have really focused on that internal communications. We've also focused on our intranet as a place where people can find information and resources. We have a lot of work to do there, but I was curious to understand if other people are using any other channels besides newsletters and intranet to communicate with and keep your staff connected. or if anybody's got anything in their newsletter that they think is a real hit that people enjoy seeing. I would say, this is Angela Mills again with Engineering Virginia Tech, using either Microsoft Teams or Zoom chat, we use both depending on who we're talking to on campus, has completely transformed making conversation and cleaned up email. And it's going back to my AOL and some messenger college days, but at the same time, what has been really neat about it is I'm connecting with people in a different way remotely and I think managing chapters for seven years at the University of Tennessee for coming to Virginia Tech, I had to interact and talk with people all over the nation that I wasn't seeing on a regular basis and build relationships. And so I feel like I've sort of gotten that back by utilizing these different channels and medias that are more of a conversation than a more formal. And so I think that's been a really nice shift that came out of this by happenstance. Yeah. Yeah, we also use Teams as well. And we definitely see it a lot with a one-to-one communication, chit chat back and forth. You get a little bit of personality in there, whoever adds funny gifts or funny emojis. I've learned that our budget person has a really dry sense of humor and I wouldn't have known that had we not had Teams and he loves to post a little joke here and again. Sorry, I don't know why my power just keep going in and out. But anyway, but one thing that we've had a challenge with is we've tried to use Teams to create community. So we've created like a new hires team and we also have sort of a, we call it the UA Cafe and we have a couple of different topics like plant aficionados or outdoorsy stuff and keeping those conversations going is actually really hard. And we've just seen that that doesn't seem to work for us. So I'd be curious, does anybody have a way that's working for you to keep virtual conversations going just sort of the social aspect of things? Is anybody doing that well? I see Erica shaking her head. You're not doing that well. Okay. Yeah, we launched our new hires team last fall thinking that it would be a great place for new hires to sort of get to know each other and also to ask questions. And it feels pretty much just like we're posting to try and keep the conversation alive. And that's tough. Yeah. Yeah, I would add, I think Lizzie said it's hard online. It's harder online for sure, right? It is. It is, yeah. Well, if you have any thoughts, feel free to, if you have a win or some thoughts, share that offline. I'd love to hear what's working for you. But we are starting to think about how we might differentiate our channels and add to them so that we can make sure that we stay in communication and connect with our employees no matter where they are. We also have invested some time and energy into manager training. We recognized that working in this environment requires managers to really be on top of their game, really understanding how to set goals, how to do performance management, how to have difficult conversations. So we worked with our HR, central HR department to develop monthly sessions. We host those at our collaboration days, which is a once per month event where folks can come back and see each other, kind of like your one day in the office, I think Mary-Catherine, you were saying, that you have at Duke. And that has, I think, helped. We've been doing it for a year now. We are about to be thinking about what 2024 will hold in this space. If I had to say something that I'd like to see different, I'd like to see us do the trainings that we're doing with a little bit more specificity in a hybrid and remote environment. Right now, we were just talking about, those sessions were really about the skills, which are important, but then how do you employ those skills in this kind of environment? And I don't think that we got as specific as we needed to be there. Did anybody else ramp up their manager training? Lindsay, it looked like you shook your head there. Yeah, we have a whole new management training, Ashley, actually. Cool. Yeah, and we're doing even more plus Delta within our division. So folks like me who are on the engagement side have actually been through that as well. So starting at the higher management level. So yeah, we've definitely leaned into more training in this new time. Yeah, that's awesome. And are you offering those things in person on the days when you're working remotely? And on the days when you're working in person? Or are some of your trainings also virtual? It's a combination. So like with plus Delta, we got the calendar for the next six months and half were in person and half were online. And those that were in person, our regional folks actually flew in for the in-person, which was really great. That's great. Yeah. Good. Yeah, I think we have a lot to do here and we can keep doing more and more manager training. I also think that we need to start thinking about training for everyone, specifically about being successful in this environment. So we'll be focusing on some of those things in the years to come. So we talked a little bit about some of this technology. We talked about desk hoteling software. I think that we're in a good place with our current software. We also implemented soft phones so that we don't have, a few of our AVPs still have desk phones. But most of us just have soft phones. And so they can ring on your laptop or they can ring on your cell phone, which just keeps people flexible. One thing that we've seen an increase in is the need for project management tools. You know, we have, everybody's seemed to make moves over to SharePoint and Teams and things like that. But last week at our week of learning, we did a session on Microsoft Planner, which is one of the tools that we get automatically from the university. And we anticipated that we would have about 60 people register for that session. So we placed it in this one particular room as we made the schedule. And we had about 130 people register for that session. So there are a lot of people who are really interested in employing project management tools. And I think that has to do with having a dispersed staff and just trying to keep everybody up to date on where things are in terms of a project. Are you guys seeing the same thing? Yeah. What tools are you using? I'd be curious to know. What tools are you using to manage projects? We use Wrike actually. We adopted it earlier this year and they're trying to put everything into it. So all teams kind of have to collaborate within the software. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I'm curious because we don't have an all unit solution. And so that does seem to present some challenges for us. Some teams use Smartsheets, some teams use monday.com. Other folks now are using Planner. But yeah, this whole team solution seems like an interesting one. Is anybody else using another software? Emory is using Wrike it sounds like. Anybody using Asana or another tool out there? Nope. Okay. Yeah, that's the situation that we're in. We actually have a small team that's using Asana as well but Microsoft Planner is accessible to everybody. So that is one of the reasons why we hosted this session to see if we could get some people to switch over. But yeah, Asana and Planner, but no all team solution. Interesting. Great. All right. We mentioned some of our in-person events. So while we are really a flexible work environment we do think that it's important for us to come together sometimes. And so our collaboration days are once a month. They're on the third Wednesday of the month. And on two of those, actually four of those we host community meetings. We always have had community meetings. They were kind of quarterly. This is where the entire community of advancement professionals at UVA come together for an all hands meeting. We just combined those with the collaboration days that we have in April and December. And then we also host community meetings that are days and week of learning. So our day of learning is every August and our week of learning is every January. And they are full on conferences. Last week, we enjoyed our experience at the Forum Hotel in Charlottesville which I highly recommend if you happen to be visiting Charlottesville. And we had about 50 different sessions over the course of three days. We had pre-conference team retreats on Tuesday followed by three days of conference together with a celebration at the end. Our president joined us for our community meeting to help us celebrate crossing the $5 billion milestone. And then we ended the week with a reception hosted by our advancement community excellence team which is our rewards and recognition team. And we gave everybody a fun gift to commemorate the occasion. But it's a really important time that we believe that we need people to come back for. So we do support travel for our staff to come back for the days and weeks of learning and put them up in a hotel in Charlottesville. And then collaboration days are not required. They are highly encouraged, especially on community meetings. But we do ask that you have a business purpose for coming back, whether that's to attend the community meeting or you have an in-person meeting that you need to attend. Maybe you're going to a training, something like that. So people come back, we have food at our offices. We've sort of taken the, if you build it, they will come mentality there to help encourage people to find opportunities to come back together and collaborate. And that's been working really well. Anybody else do anything like either of these two? Has anybody do a training event? No. I know there were some folks on the call, I think from NC State. They've done a day of learning before. Yeah, great. Hi, I'm Allison. We do education day. Which is actually coming up on Monday of this week. So it does, this will be our second one. Our first one was last year and was successful. So we would love a week, but a day is where we start. Great place to begin. And I think that what we hear from our staff is that they feel really invested in, in terms of our opportunities for them to learn and gather as a community. And so that really does help us with retention. It's a great way for us to share information, to share best practices, to help people level up on some of our technology. And so it's been something. We did it before the pandemic. We continued it through the pandemic in all kinds of different ways, virtually, hybrid, whatever. But we've gone back to an in-person conference. So, yeah. I think the sense of community too is what people are really eager for and to like be together. So. Yeah. That was the great thing about the location. This is the first time we had it at this particular hotel and it's a conference center. So they have a lot of space. And what happened was people stayed and chatted and had impromptu meetings and all the hallway conversations that you hear about when people talk about hybrid and remote work, those were happening. And that was really great to see. Yeah, ours is hosted at a conference center for one of our largest donors, the company that he owns, he allows us to use this space. So it is kind of like a all-encompassing thing. That's awesome. Great. Thank you. All right. Just to wrap things up, because we only have a few more minutes, the focus now sort of going forward is employee engagement. As of tomorrow, it'll be announced. I have a new title. My title right now today is Senior Director for People Operations, which is kind of a corporate title, but it's changing to even more corporate title of Chief Employee Engagement Officer. And what that means is sort of to be seen, but essentially my role will be about community building and fostering connection amongst our employees. I'll also be the culture champion, working closely with our Advancement Community Excellence Team. And the Advancement Community Excellence Team is where we have all of our awards. We have several different pillars that we recognize staff for, and that they're really sort of the culture bearers. And so I'll be working closely with them, a number of other projects to bring people together and help them really feel connected to the work that we're doing and to UVA and to each other. So I'm really excited about that. Talk to me in a year about how it's going, but that's sort of where we're heading from here. So we know that this is an investment we need to make in making sure that we're purposeful, that we're strategic, and that we're really just doing the work to make sure that people stay engaged with this work. So I'm gonna stop sharing. I'd love, what questions do you guys have, or what challenges are you facing in your work environment that probably other people are facing as well? Maybe we can chat through some of those challenges. I'd love to jump in, Ashley, and say congrats on your new title. It sounds so fun. Thanks, Tara. We know how important employee engagement is, so that's great. I'd love, our team is interested in learning more about, always love to hear more about you all's learning days. You all have been an inspiration to me in this role as well as in past roles. Curious about the collaboration day model and how you all structure that, if at all. Are there meetings, trainings, other things around it to structure it, or is it more assumed that we're all here together, it'll organically happen? We'd love to hear more about your thinking on that. Yeah, we've evolved, is what I'll first say. The very first collaboration days, or at least the first couple, we packed them full of meetings and trainings and lunch and basically every single second of the day so that you couldn't possibly collaborate with anyone at all, unless we told you you were going to collaborate. And we got a lot of feedback from folks that they needed a minute, they needed a minute to breathe, that they wanted to have time to collaborate in their teams. So we backed off a little bit and we don't pack the entire day full, but we do offer training on those days. Specifically, we do try to focus on training that's best done in person. So software training is one thing that we focus on that seems to be something that people really want to get in a classroom together with their laptops open and work through training. And so we've done a lot of that, but we also do our manager's training on those days. And then we do try to build a little social time in as well. So sometimes our ACE committee will offer a social happy hour that evening. We planned our holiday party for our December collaboration day. So it is a packed day still, but we do allow for a little bit more space for natural conversations, collaboration time, and maybe even a little downtime. But that feedback was really important for us to get there. Yeah. Any other questions? I think we have about one more minute. Hey Kenny, what's up? Equity, I mean, I think what, I don't know if that's an issue across other institutions and universities, but I know it is, you know, kind of it's just sensitive to know that some employees do have the option and others don't. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a challenge for everybody, even for us, you know, right now our, we only have a few positions that we do require to come into the office. Our receptionist is one of those and she's on my team. It is also her preference. So that makes it, that makes it easy, but I could see that it could be challenging if it was not someone's preference. And so that, I know that that comes up. David, you have your hand up. Yeah, I work with Tara and Mary Catherine at Duke. And I mentioned in the chat, a book that we recently worked through by Gallup. And one of the recommendations in that book around equity was that if you have folks that have to be in, for instance, receptionist, equity might mean you offering them some creative work situations, like maybe they can work four days a week, four tens or something like that, so that they aren't feeling like they're left out. And I thought that was a great suggestion. So where you have people that really need to be in office, get a little creative there, they're suggesting, and you'll go a long way to giving a sense of equity. You know, you can't give them what the fully remote person has, but you can do something more than doing nothing. And so that's their recommendation. Yeah, and that's, that is a great recommendation. And we sort of did the same thing with our receptionist prior to the pandemic. Our reception spot always had someone sitting at it, and it was our receptionist and her supervisor's job to fill the lunch period. And we have decided that that can be open during lunch. So nobody sits there during lunch. And that actually, I think, has taken a big weight off of our receptionist's shoulders to know that she doesn't need to be worried about that. So that's a flexibility that we were able to offer. Great. Well, hey, I hope some of you all are planning to come to the CASE District 3 conference in Orlando, which is in less than two weeks. We'll be down there. I'll be sharing a little bit more about our hybrid and remote journey for UVA, but there are so many great sessions happening. And so I hope that we'll see you there. And if you ever have any questions about hybrid or remote work, or just want to chit-chat about advancement in general, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to talk with you. Thank you, guys. Have an awesome day.

University of Virginia

hybrid work environment

employee engagement

flexible work policy

work-life balance

employee motivation

remote work experiences

communication platforms

employee surveys

positive outcomes