Staff Award for Excellence - Michelle Hepler

Michelle is professional, prompt and a pleasure to work with. It comes down to the extra step ..... Michelle doesn't just answer the question asked, she goes a step further. That extra step may be to provide an explanation for an answer, examples, alternatives; it may be to provide a policy, a template, a strategy for accomplishing the hoped for goal; it could be thinking one step further than the requester and providing direction and data before they even know they need it! Michelle’s help in finding alternatives and creative solutions when our divisions encounter challenges ...... she is very solution oriented and goes above and beyond to help me find workable solutions. She is a wealth of knowledge and always has the answers to my questions right at her fingertips. I'm not quite sure why this is her standard approach to her work, but it sure produces many satisfied divisions/managers as well as the right work happening at the right time using the right title, right pay for the right person! Her years of experience gaining valuable HR knowledge coupled by a strong desire to help people result in this type of support for our divisions and department, and as evidenced by the support letters to this nomination, Michelle's work and her style of delivery is absolutely exemplary!

As an example of her proficiency and always taking the extra step (a real time example from a divisional manager): "If I am trying to figure out the wording for a particular type of posting, she will send me a copy of the last posting of that type so that I can use that to guide me, to update the previous one or make whole scale changes. She always thinks five steps ahead and anticipates what needs to be done. When I return the proposed postings to her she reviews them and may make suggestions for changes that always seem to help attract the best individuals. She knows my work and my needs. I can’t tell you how much I will miss that caring, personal touch. I trust her knowledge and just know that she has the interest of my team at heart."

Michelle has worked miracles during this past year and throughout the pandemic (and really even before that!). She managed the revised and revised again hiring processes and was instrumental in retaining many employees through her tenacious influence and willingness to produce data and information to prove the validity of those retentions. Michelle is absolutely fantastic! I have always found her to be very responsive and highly customer-focused. She often provides creative suggestions to help faculty with their hiring challenges, particularly during COVID with all of the new processes that needed to be followed.

Michelle has an unwavering commitment to building and maintaining strong relationships with her customers, colleagues and other leaders within our department. As a result, Michelle provides outstanding support to them; they are part of her work family, and she works tirelessly for them. She recognizes the importance of timeliness, as much of the HR needs of our divisions are time sensitive, and she moves swiftly through the steps, being an expert in the content, the systems and the people. Because of her experience, she serves as a great resource of information and directs individuals to the appropriate people, processes or departments.

As an example, I provide the following three similar examples from her areas:

• "I am a new supervisor to the division. Michelle has been so helpful with all the hiring I’ve had to do since I started. She has been so patient and kind. I’ve had to learn so many new processes and she has patiently answered my endless questions."
• "I started my position just over a year ago, so everything I have done related to HR in the last fiscal year has been new to me. She has guided me through two new hires, performance evaluations, and an uncomfortable employee situation. Michelle has been patient, prompt, responsive, and thorough with me. I sincerely appreciate all of her guidance."
• "I’ve had the pleasure of working with Michelle recently on two items – admin differentials and my recent job posting. Michelle was extremely helpful, timely in her responses, and professional. The admin diffs were very fluid, as more staff were added as the volume increased, and then I kept having to extend month by month for certain staff. Michelle handled it all with ease, making it easier for me to keep it all organized. It was clear she was on top of things. For the job posting, Michelle guided me through the hiring processing, including making arrangements so that I could have access to resumes directly. If I had to figure that out, it would have taken me considerable time and much frustration. All the behind the scene work she did made it so easy for me. She’s a great resource, and a pleasure to work with. Michelle is such a valuable employee, and much of that is due to the superb service she provides and the way she provides it - with kindness, patience, thoroughness and experience."

The work Michelle does is dependent on processes put in place by MM HR. Therefore, any improvements made must be nuanced and only related to our local work, as the steps, forms, data sets, needs, etc. are at the discretion of MM HR. To help all of us, Michelle was instrumental in developing our single document outlining our scope of services at the various HR levels (Department, HR BP, MM HR, HRSC, etc.), and she has continually tweaked and refined that document as we have learned our way along this new-ish HR Model. Additionally, she has created HR training documents for many of her divisions to help them know what is needed in language more easily understood outside the HR world, specifically in terms of the compensation pathways that HR has. The various salary setting models MM HR utilizes are difficult to navigate, but Michelle is an expert (having build salary setting models in previous roles) and helps managers understand how candidates salaries were determined. This has come in specifically handy this past year as we have struggled with hiring Research Administrative roles, which uses a salary setting model. Michelle was also instrumental in the work done on the FMLA road map that many of you have used, which many have used to assist themselves and their staff as they navigate FMLA leaves.

Finally, from a divisional manager, the one process improvement that she found to be particularly helpful is that Michelle makes notes on her calendar for the manager's upcoming deadlines, like posting end dates or other activities that she will need to prompt me for information on. Given the sheer volume of managers (and staff) that Michelle interacts with across our department, I find this amazing.