Dear Colleagues,
We want to thank staff for taking the time to provide us with your feedback. Staff Council received over 75 submissions through our Feedback Form following the recent community email addressing 2023-2024 salary increases. This feedback tells us that staff are feeling a sense of frustration and disappointment related to the economic impact of the announced salary increase as well as a perceived lack of priority to staff work/life balance. We acknowledge the complexity of the decision that led to this year’s more modest salary increase and acknowledge WPI has made important steps addressing pay inequity through the staff compensation project. Additionally, we believe that the staff concerns should be shared with university leadership as there is an impact on the overall climate of our staff body and we want to leverage the Staff Council’s role to work with the university to identify solutions.
Through some robust discussion among the Staff Council, we agree that there are areas that should be benchmarked and considered for adjustment that can help improve the staff climate at the university. We’ve synthesized the feedback data (using some super-cool AI technology!) and offered the following focus areas as opportunities to explore potential improvements with WPI leadership:
• University Hours of Operation; Reduced Work Week Hours
• Fostering more transparent and regular communication on matters that directly affect staff
• Flexible/Alternate Work Week Models
• Summer Working Hours/Schedule
A summary of feedback to the staff concerns and the above-identified focus areas have been shared with university leadership. Additionally, Staff Council leadership is meeting early next week with President Wang and SVP Lauren Turner to directly communicate these concerns and recommendations to them.
The Council is confident that WPI leadership will be open to collaborating with the Staff Council on these concerns and amenable to engaging in further discussion to identify solutions. As a Council, we are committed to advocating for widely shared staff considerations that directly impact the working experience of staff and WPI staff climate.
We look forward to continued discussion on this important matter and plan to provide an update in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your commitment and support of the Staff Council.
Staff Council members –
Bill Battelle (Vice Chair), Lusine Baghsarian, Adrienne Boertjens, Nicole Caligiuri, Jen Cluett, Amy Curran, Diane Dubois (Treasurer), Roxanne Gardner (Communications and Public Relations Officer), Mike Hamilton, Kim Hollan, Pat Howe, Caitlin Keller (Secretary), Alesia LeSane, Nicole Luiz, Kristin Marengo , Sarah Miles, Elena Morganelli and Theona Scola (Chair)