Congratulate the inaugural winners of the HR Pillar Award

Kathleen has been with the leave team for about a year, servicing Medical Center team members. Her willingness to help out other team members and show compassion in difficult situations surfaced recently at OIB one day, when an upset customer walked in and was quite upset and ready to resign. Kathleen calmed the customer down, learned about her chronic illness, and helped her apply for medical leave and short-term disability. "She was able to get the employee the help they needed by taking the time to listen to them," reported Laura Brown, her nominator.

Click here to hear Laura's testimonial about Kathleen Michel.

Lisa promotes and centers DEI in culture conversations and work discussions, and manages to provide direction and insight on how to make even technical tasks more inclusive. She promotes inclusion and accessibility in Talent Management team discussions, DEI in her learning courses and programs, and DEI focus in and recommendations for the HR Foundations Culture Working Group. "I am always inspired by her dedication and reminded of the importance of consistently centering DEI in our HR work to avoid exclusion and unintentional adverse impact," wrote Charlotte Russell, her nominator. 

Click here to hear Charlotte Russell's testimonial about Lisa Harris.

Maggie turned a very time-consuming bi-annual position clean-up process into a largely automated process in Workday Drive, and was the primary designer of the new process. The original process involved running four Workday reports, downloading them to Excel (each taking 2+ hours to download), copy/pasting data into another Excel file for analysis, then taking 1-2 hours to analyze the data, and all this done three times for each bi-annual cycle. "A process that took 12+ hours is now cut down to less than 2 hours. All of the reports that used to be downloaded can simply be scheduled to refresh whenever is needed, so they are ready to go whenever it's time to work on the project," reported Jeremiah Stevens, her nominator. 

Click here to hear Jeremiah Stevens' testimonial about Maggie Breedon.

Joe and Heather built the strategy and operationalization of the new Career Services function within Talent Management. They researched over 20 vendors in the Careers Services space, scheduled and evaluated demos, built out team member personas based on data gathered from focus groups they held. They collaborated with key stakeholders on their needs and Talent Management's strategy. "Joe and Heather began working on the Career Services strategy and execution before we received funding for the career coach positions and have been working on it for about a year now," said Carolyn Cullen, their nominator. "They did so because they are passionate about this work and what it will do for UVA and our employees and our community members."

Click here to hear Carolyn Cullen's testimonial about Joe Arton and Heather Newton.

If you would like to nominate a colleague who exceeds customer expectations, streamlines a work process, or a group of seven or fewer colleagues who completed a project important to the University’s mission and vision, access the Nomination Form here! Nominations are due by the 15th of every month. More information can be found on the HR Pillar Award webpage.