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Leadership Development Update
The first of the seven core courses in the leadership development program is now complete. This course taught us how to: communicate effectively, deal with negativity and rumours, give feedback and have tough conversations.
There are 140 people that participated in this course and they all have been given a homework assignment to ask for feedback on their communications style and to practice giving feedback.
Feedback should be specific and actionable. The model for giving feedback should look like this:
- Identify the action/behavior you want to give feedback on
- Explain the impact of the action/behavior
- Ask for input on what they think they can do to address issue being identified
- Discuss and decide on the mutually agreed upon desired outcome
- Follow-up and discuss openly often. New behaviors are hard to learn without support and practice
These feedback skills are some of the new skills you should see folks trying out. Let’s all help support everyone to demonstrate and practice these new skills.
Learn more about the program on the Building Operations Web site staff tab… http://www3.buildingoperations.ubc.ca/staff/projects-programs/leadership-program/
Not Myself Today Campaign events this week
It’s UBC Thrive week—both a mindset and a week dedicated to the promotion of building positive mental health for all staff, faculty and students.
For the second year in a row, Building Ops is participating in the Not Myself Today Campaign as a way to champion workplace mental health education and awareness. This year we’re aiming to create more agents of change within our workplace, empowering more employees and managers to improve mental health at work.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Laugh for the Health of It: Laughter Yoga with John Wallstrom
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Training Room 042A & B
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Pet Therapy with the St. John’s Ambulance Therapy Dogs Heidi & George
11:30 am – 1:00 pm
USB Lobby
For staff with a 30-minute lunch who wish to attend a 1-hour workshop, please speak with your supervisor.
Classroom Maintenance Date to plan your work accordingly
In an effort to assist with planning and being proactive below are some constraining dates to get work done.
Last day of class: Dec 2, 2016 (Available Monday, Dec 5)
Exams Start: Dec 6, 2016 (Available Thursday, Dec 22)
Exams End: Dec 21, 2016 (Available Friday, Dec 23)
To find winter & summer term, exam and reading break dates for the next six years, visit:
https://senate.ubc.ca/vancouver/termdates
Do you have a co-worker deserving recognition? Nominations are now open for the 2016 Building Ops Staff Excellence Awards
Everyone in Building Ops are invited to nominate candidates for the 2016 Staff Excellence Awards. The awards recognize staff members who demonstrate outstanding achievement and bring excellence to their work. Learn more about the categories to know which one (or more) best fits your candidate. You can also submit nominations through the Building Ops website in the Staff page.
All Building Ops employees are eligible for these awards. However, to be considered for the Kim Nulty Award, a minimum of 5 years of continuous service is required.
Winners will be announced and awards will be presented at the Building Ops Holiday Lunch on December 14, 2016. Contact Caroline Soriano for more information.
Kudos to those who helped prepare HATCH, a new space on campus
Last Wednesday, the Robotics Lab in the ICICS building hosted their very first and well-attended HATCH event. HATCH is a new lab space on campus and is an incubator for tech start-ups to transform ideas and technology-driven ventures into commercial products.
To ensure the event was a slamming success for the new incubator and an enjoyable afternoon for the 150 attendees, Building Ops staff responded swiftly to the needs of space.
Thanks go out to: Dan from Construction office; Pam and custodial; Colin and labour crew; Jarnail from waste management and Tino from BMS for making this happen with the short notice that was given.
1st O&M building manual updated to make your searches easier…tell us what you think
During the EAOS pilot for collecting information about our assets, we heard from you that the O&M building manuals are hard to search through for information. The manuals were scanned into Records as one document so when it comes to searching for information, you could be looking in a document with over 1,000 pages which is cumbersome, very tedious and time consuming.
A Trades rep on the EAOS team suggested reducing the number of pages in each section to make searching easier and faster. In early October we started working with Records to do just that.
The first set of manuals completed are for the Henry Angus Building – 023. This building had 19 manuals and 1,859 pages! Now:
- Nearly all the manuals are divided into sections
- The manuals that are edited to have searchable sections now have following features:
- Standard section numbers
- A table of contents, or a standard Record Section’s index with concise section titles
- A drop list of all the sections for a quick overview
- Each section is linked to the table of content page for easy referencing
Are these changes helpful to you? Please take a look at the updated Henry Angus manuals and we share your feedback. The next O&M manuals to be tackled are 7353 – Forest Sciences, 308 – Leonard Klinck.
You can provide feedback via email or to any of the EAOS members: Karyn Magnusson, John Sacre, Denise Pearce, Janice Weigel, Marian Lis, Andy Plumridge, Pam Wasylyshen, Jeff Smith, Mark Lindsay, Marcus Drozdzik, Jeff Bondy, Alla Eremenko, Doug Corkery.
Winners of the Pumpkin Carving for the Kids
The votes are in and the winner of this year’s pumpkin carving contest is: The Face Melter – by Charles Creelman, Richard Hugli and Stan Takenaka of the Electrical Shop.
Coming in close second is Bedamned – by Lorraine Beckett and Ellen Grande from the Clerical Pool. Bedamned won as the kid’s favourite!
Thank you to all talented carvers and to all who came to pick their favorites.
