While you’re working at ٺƵ, do you ever catch yourself daydreaming of ways to make your job better? Wish you could cut a repeat hassle out of your work routine? Or wonder why ٺƵ isn’t taking advantage of an opportunity that you can clearly see?
A new campaign called asks employees to share insights like these from wherever they work at ٺƵ — whether that’s in a classroom, lab, office, hospital, field or water treatment plant. The ideas will be used to help identify institutional savings and new streams of revenue, to help fix ongoing budget challenges.
Ideas could include ways to:
- Reduce hassles for employees
- Reduce wasted time
- Find new ways to make money
- Provide innovative new streams of revenue
- Identify cost savings
- Improve efficiency
- Cut red tape
“It’s my hope that all of our faculty, staff and students will submit their ideas on how we can do things better or differently at ٺƵ to address reduced funding from the state,” Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan said.
“I believe that people ‘in the trenches’ have the greatest insights into opportunities for cost savings and efficiencies, so please let us hear from you. We want to make use of your ideas to help make ٺƵ a better place, with a more sustainable financial future.”
Prizes, donations
Helping improve ٺƵ is a reward in itself, but there’s a prize drawing, too. After you submit your idea or ideas (with or without your contact information for follow-ups), then you will have a chance to enter a prize drawing and provide your email address, which will be kept separately from idea submissions in case you want to maintain anonymity.
Everyone entered in the drawing will receive a code for free tickets to Aggie basketball or gymnastics, plus a coupon for ٺƵ Stores. Prizes include tickets to Mondavi Center shows, a $100 ٺƵ Stores gift card, earbuds and ٺƵ swag.
Once 1,000 ideas are submitted, donations of $2,000 each will be made to the ASCUD Pantry, the ٺƵ Staff Emergency Fund and the ٺƵ Health Staff Emergency Fund.
$50 million goal
Earlier this year, Croughan gathered representatives from all corners of ٺƵ to create the , which is now leading the IDEA$ at Work campaign. They’ve been challenged to identify at least $50 million in ongoing net revenue and/or savings that can be applied to the campus core mission in three to seven years, to help address ٺƵ' .
I believe that people ‘in the trenches’ have the greatest insights into opportunities for cost savings and efficiencies, so please let us hear from you. — Mary Croughan, provost and executive vice chancellor
All ideas submitted will be reviewed and evaluated by task force members, who will report out periodically on their progress. From their various vantage points throughout ٺƵ, task force members are also working on developing opportunities that they can envision.
“In particular, I’m excited to focus on new ways to package our educational content and share it with wider audiences,” said Lisa Badovinac, a task force member from the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. “I hope we can build rapid-cycle educational options that take the needs of our ever-changing community into consideration.
Ideas not selected for broad implementation will be shared with leaders in colleges, schools, administrative units and the medical center for potential implementation on a local scale.
Brenda Dawson is a marketing writer on the communications team in Finance, Operations and Administration.