Staff Award for Excellence - Carly Kish

Carly has earned her place as the model Business Manager in our department. The Internal Medicine's Director of Administrative Operations directs new Business Managers to Carly for guidance. She is so highly regarded, the Director convened a meeting for Carly to meet with the Internal Medicine Leads for Faculty Affairs and HR to determine what responsibilities should be in-scope for other divisional Business Managers. The fact that they wanted to hear how she does her job is a testament to Carly and her work performance.

Other Division Administrators have asked Carly to participate on their interview teams for their Business Managers. After each of those occasions, I have received direct feedback that they are "looking for their Carly" and that they "wished there were more Carlys!" We couldn't agree more! Carly helped select and now mentors the Business Managers in Rheumatology and Hospital Medicine and now maintains regular contact throughout the week with both of them. Carly also spearheaded the effort to bring the Business Managers together regularly as a group and leads these meetings. Carly has also taken lead on integrating two new employees into our GPM administrative team. They are meshing well, which is a direct result of Carly's efforts.

Over the past year, Carly has strived to improve communication between some of our most valued customers - faculty and staff. She has created a suggestion box for anyone to share a comment or suggestion. She also asked our Division Chief's administrative assistant to join our faculty meetings to take and distribute minutes, which is especially helpful for those who are unable to attend due to clinical or other academic obligations.

Carly also created a survey to poll the faculty about the type of administrative assistance they receive or would like to receive, and a poll for the staff regarding their workload. This information led to transformational changes in how we provide administrative assistance to our faculty while also increasing staff engagement and satisfaction. Her efforts to improve communication within our division have resulted in newly forged and improved working relationships.

Carly has improved our faculty onboarding and orientation process by querying her colleagues for best practices and implementing them for two new faculty hires in February 2020. She believes in continuous improvement and is willing to learn from others who may have a better process than GPM does. Specifically, Carly has maintained regular contact with the new faculty members and, as a direct result, had already begun building relationships with them before they arrived on campus. Prior to this change in practice, new faculty's most frequent contact had been with Faculty Affairs. While this is still encouraged and necessary, Carly's communications have been important to establish familiarity and trust with our division as well.