Meet Jon Williams, HR Solution Center Inquiry Team

HR Inquiry and Case Management Support is the foundation of the HRSC. It provides a knowledgeable resource available to all UVA colleagues for answers to common HR questions, issues and situations, such as: time and attendance, payroll, benefits and wellness, leave/PTO, recruitment, education and tuition assistance, and employee relations.

We asked one of the Inquiry Team’s members (there are 10 full-time and 4 temporary staff members), Jon Williams, and his supervisor, Christian Deck, to take a little time out of their busy day to tell us about their work and how a typical day goes … well, there is no typical day, they assured me!

Jon: Every day is completely different, and there is a wide range of things that come our way, from typical employee needs such as navigating the education benefit application process, to unexpected questions such as “How do I apply for a job at Olive Garden?” We may not always know the answer to the question immediately, but we know who to ask or where to go, and we do our absolute best to get an answer back to our customers as quickly as possible. (“There is no Olive Garden in Charlottesville, but you can apply online at their website; let me give you that URL.”)

Q: Tell us about yourself, Jon.

Jon: I came to UVA from a recruiting background 15 years ago, having recruited for key positions at SAIC and Northrop Grumman as a Senior Recruiter and Recruiting Manager.  I began my career at UVA as a Senior Executive Recruiter with the Executive Search Group. I found my stride at the HRSC, however, and have been working on the Inquiry Team for almost 11 years. The work is not for everyone – it can be very rewarding, but also very challenging at times.

I’m happily married, and my wife Beth works at the Curry School of Education. One of our two sons attends Virginia Tech and is majoring in Mechanical Engineering, and our other son (pictured) is a senior at Albemarle High School and will be attending UVA in the fall. I’ve coached soccer and basketball for many years, but have recently taken up long distance running, which has really helped me get into great shape. We are very involved with activities with our boys, volunteering for local community causes, and I’m Vice President at Peace Lutheran Church and very involved there with Church activities (including bringing on a new Pastor at the Church). I also have extended family here; my parents are in Charlottesville and my brother has a wife and five children here in town and is also quite active in the community. After living in the stressful environment of Northern Virginia, Charlottesville has been a welcome change for me and my family!

Because I’m active in the community and have family connections in Charlottesville, sometimes the calls coming in to the HRSC may be a neighbor or someone I know personally. That always changes the tone of the conversation when they realize who I am – both a colleague, a neighbor, and a friend who will help them with their problem. I love that!

Q: What are some of the challenges of the work you do as Inquiry Team representatives?

Christian: We do our very best to manage everyone’s expectations about what good service means. Some measurements of quality service are more obvious than others. I think we could all agree that providing accurate information, with friendliness and in a timely fashion is key to a great customer experience. However, lets take a quick dive into what we define as “timely” service, for it means different things to different people. For example, email response time: some of our employees feel responding to an email should take us 20 minutes, tops. However, depending on a number of factors such as Inquiry volume, staffing and complexity of the issue, it could take up to 48 hours to receive a response. Or let’s say we receive a complicated inquiry that takes us two hours to get an answer back to the employee. We may receive a low survey score from our customer because their expectation of “timely response” is based on their definition of what is timely service. The customer doesn’t always understand the work that’s being done behind the scenes to provide them with an accurate answer. This is particularly true with complex HR inquiries, for which we spend a large amount of time researching and investigating before we are able to respond with complete information. I think this can be a challenge for myself as well as the team.

Jon: We do get a number of inquiries from applicants wanting an update on their job application status. Unfortunately, we can’t supply them with any more information than what they can see in their application status online. Some applicants feel the need to express their frustration with the application and hiring process at the University, and the Inquiry team is often the sounding board for those concerns.  It can be frustrating for the Inquiry team member as well because we are often at a loss as to what we can do to help these individuals.

A lot of people send in an email and call at the same time, to see which avenue will give them the quickest answer. I can see the email cases as they come in, even while I’m on the phone with the customer sending an email about the same thing. Receiving multiple cases through different channels about the same thing loads up on our volume, which can slow down our response and resolution times. However, it’s all part of the job and we feel that we can manage both call and email for the same case at the same time. We do receive inquiries that are not at all related to HR; for example, people call us for tax filing appointments, even though we are not affiliated with the scheduling process. We will offer guidance to point people in the right direction, such as providing United Way’s phone number and website information for tax appointments.

Inquiries regarding Payroll concerns is our second highest Salesforce case topic. It’s sometimes difficult being asked to answer Payroll-related questions when we are not actually working on the Payroll/Finance team. In the past, HR and Payroll were combined, so we are familiar with receiving inquiries about W-2s, payroll tax questions, and paycheck requests. However, there are concerns that we need to escalate to the Payroll team via Salesforce. I feel it would be more efficient to have those inquiries automatically go to Payroll in order to expedite a response and resolution. Process improvement, right?

Christian: Our colleagues don’t like to wait, and often abandon their call if they are made to wait more than 15 seconds. We have an average wait time of 1:30 (longer during Open Enrollment), though sometimes we can offer an immediate response. We get that everyone’s busy and may have extremely limited time on the phone while working at the hospital, for example, but we get to everyone as quickly as we can.

Q: How do you respond if your customer is upset?

Christian: When one of our customers is upset, expressing empathy and then making an effort to thoroughly understand the problem really helps de-escalate the situation. I always remember that the person I’m speaking with or responding to is an important part of what makes UVA a great place to learn and develop, not only for students, but for professionals as well. These individuals are my colleagues, working with me at UVA, and there should be a mutual level of respect between us. In addition, it’s important to take ownership of the problem, reassure the person (regardless of a previous experience) that I am going to personally see that the issue gets resolved as soon as possible. I often give my direct phone line to reassure my colleagues they can reach me, if needed, at any time. Establishing trust is essential, and offering that level of service, assurance, understanding, and ownership helps to build that trust. I think this approach has had a positive impact on the Inquiry team’s reputation and reliability at the University. I’m very proud of this team and the fact that the Inquiry Team has had the highest rated customer service score in all of HR over the past year+. The team consistently receives monthly survey ratings of 4.5 or higher out of a possible high score of 5.0.

Jon: Monday morning is the toughest time for us and is typically our busiest day of the week. Some of our colleagues have stressed about their problems overnight and throughout the weekend and want a quick, accurate response when they contact us in the morning. If the issue requires escalation to another HR team and can’t be resolved right on the spot, this can add to the customer’s built-up frustration from the weekend or previous day, which can lead to an uncomfortable experience for them. The key is to understand this, stay calm, friendly, and remain focused on a resolution to the problem. Going into lunchtime, people like to contact us a lot, understandably. However, because we take our lunch break in shifts around the same time UVA employees do, this can lead to a little bit higher call hangups and some degree of frustration on the employees’ part, as we aren’t fully staffed during these times.

Q: How do you and your colleagues prepare yourselves for the Inquiry Team work?

Jon: The work can be emotionally exhausting by the end of the day, but thankfully, I have a good support structure both in and outside of HR. I come in with a good mindset every morning, I keep myself healthy, and I don’t allow myself to get run down. I work hard to keep up my enthusiasm for excellent customer service every day, and our team works extremely hard, which keeps me motivated. I am passionate about producing great quality service and I thrive when my customer satisfaction ratings reflect that passion.

I also have a very compassionate and supportive manager (Christian), and our team is stronger now than ever before during my time here in HRSC. We have some very intelligent, very driven employees who offer a wide variety of professional backgrounds, from training to records and recruiting. We bring a breadth of experience and knowledge to the team, as well as different personalities, but we work very well together.

Q: How has the work changed over the past decade for the Inquiry Team?

Jon: The HR Service Center came into place in September 2009, led by Erica Wheat (who currently leads the HR Benefits and Leave team). We had six team members then, and only answered human resources calls. Now we answer everything, including technical questions on Workday. We’ve learned to be agile with the increased demand for expertise on many fronts.

The HRSC has morphed into a huge resource center for our customers. I remember not very long ago we used to manually track our calls on paper; now we have Salesforce that allows detailed case management, reporting and metrics, and a fantastic knowledge base to build and pull information from. The new phone system and voice media (routing system, call tree options) also has improved our service model significantly.

Q: What are some takeaways you would love your UVA colleagues to know about the Inquiry Team in HR?

Jon: We’re your colleagues, your neighbors. We work at UVA, on Grounds, and we’re highly involved in your community, in your churches, and in your volunteer activities. We’re here to help you and we work very hard to solve your problems as quickly as possible. Some of us have been here for decades, some are new. Give us a chance to figure things out; we may not know everything instantly, but we know where to go to get answers. We can’t always do things for you such as making changes in Workday, but we can help direct and guide you to how to get there.

Christian: There’s a lot of cross-team collaboration across all of HR that enables us to share accurate information with our employees. Human resources is complicated here at UVA! There are so many different staff types -- professors, doctors, nurses, Facilities Management crews, wage/temp employees, Health System staff, and UPG employees. The benefits for each staff type is often different and benefits answers vary for all of them. We work with a large team of human resources experts to get the answers to you. Please be patient while we dig deeply into our resources to provide you with the most accurate and complete answers to your questions.

Jon: Things are always evolving and changing, though we know most people despise change! For example, the HR Leave Center used to manage several leave types, but now in most situations it is managed by UNUM or the Reed Group. We’ve gotten a lot of calls about that! We do our best to mitigate stress by keeping things light and trying to laugh throughout our day.

Christian: We appreciate our customers, our colleagues, and we appreciate that they trust us to find a solution for them. They call because they know we can provide a clear, concise answer. A very large portion of HR work and volume flows into the HR Solution Center, via the Inquiry team. We take a lot of pride in still being able to provide that all important one-to-one customer experience to our employees and community. Thank you for taking the time to sit with us and learn more about how HR Inquiry and Case Management Support functions!