CE Managers
Meeting
06-24-16
Compiled by
Yolanda Anguiano
CE Update: (Elizabeth Sargent)
New and
returning managers were welcomed to the group: Sara Pope and Rebecca Denham will
be attending while Kallie is out on maternity leave and will be optional
attendees once Kallie returns. Angela Barratt and Nhu Le were also
welcomed back. Their attendance will also be optional. Laura
Montegrande from Vinson will also be attending while serving as acting
Assistant Manager while Craig Bertuglia serves as acting Manager at Park Place
while Dena’s on maternity leave. Executive Assistant for Customer
Experience Leah Fraser was also greeted. She is helping Liz during this
interim period. If you need a quick answer from Liz, copy Leah and she
will ensure Liz gets the message and you get a response.
Jesus
Villegas is the new Librarian II Assistant Manager of Acres Homes/Oak
Forest. As of July 1st, Hellena Stokes will be the new
Assistant Chief of Central and Danielle Wilson will become Manager of the
Gregory School while still serving as HPL’s curator. Danielle is going on
maternity leave in mid-July, so Assistant Manager Billy Glasco will be your
contact until she returns.
Kallie had her
baby girl Friday, 6/17. Her name is Kiersten Layla Benes. She was
6lbs. 12 oz. and 19 inches long.
Renovation
announcements:
·
Dominick
Spinelli is the new Librarian III Manager of Jungman. There is no set
date yet for the Jungman re-opening. In preparation, Liz sent an email
asking staff if they are interested in working there. Once Liz has names,
she will discuss it with Sr. Managers Patrick, Djuina and Pedro. Liz
doesn’t want to cripple another location just to get staff for Jungman.
·
Liz
will send out a similar email for Blue Ridge. The location will have an
early literacy focus and requires the right people to work there that can
handle crying babies and a service model focused on young kids and families.
·
An
email asking for interest in serving Young will also be forthcoming. The
new facility is double the size of the old location and will have more
technology.
·
Each
of these libraries will re-open without additional staffing resources. We
have to figure out how to make this work within our existing means.
Vacancies: There are several Librarian III
vacancies (SWX, KEN, CEN) and Librarian IIs (KEN, KIDS) that Liz and Laurie are
working with HR to post them as quickly as possible. There is a new
approval process HR must go through, so between vacations and approvals things
have gotten slower.
HOPE: As part of the HOPE Union’s meet and
confer agreement in 2015, every staff member will be receiving a small increase
to their base pay in July. It will appear either on their first or second
check in July. The chart that details the increase employees will be
getting was distributed. Like last year, the chart divides staff into
whether or not their current pay is below or above the midpoint range for their
classification. If their current pay is below the midpoint range they
will receive the highest increase in pay. If their current pay is above
the midpoint range they will receive a slightly lower amount. The max
that the increase will be is $1040 annually or about $40 biweekly. Please
make your staff aware of this.
CE
Suggestions: We’ve been
asked if Customer Experience has a suggestion box. We have a Suggestions
tab on the Customer Experience blog (http://nlideas.blogspot.com/) for that purpose. Click on the
tab and follow it through to the Suggestion box. Please encourage all
staff to use it. Each comment is sent to Liz, Laurie and the NL Leaders
Gmail.
Staff
Appreciation: Most
locations spent their FY16 staff appreciation funds. There were only a
few that had funds left. At the July meeting we should be able to provide
you with your FY17 budget. We also hope to have Financial Services here
to provide some brief training at an upcoming meeting. We ran into a few
issues of staff purchasing personal items on the same receipt they submitted
for reimbursement. This is especially problematic if you used the tax exempt
form. More information is forthcoming.
Mayor’s
message: Please take a
moment to read Mayor Turner’s message in the City Savvy this month. It
was titled City government is working better than
ever.
Libraries are specifically mentioned. He said that the City budget wasn’t
balanced on “the backs of our library and park users” or “by laying off police
and firefighters.” Liz thought it was important to note that libraries
and parks were viewed on the same level as police and firefighters.
Another related article in the same City Savvy highlighted Library customers
giving kudos to HPL staff. Those recognized were Tina Briscoe (LOO), Brad
Dobos (CEN), Temeka Doakes (KEN), Norola Morgan (SMI) and Hiawatha Henry
(Programming).
Liz
shared that she is inspired to work for the City because of Mayor Turner.
He was one of the first Mayors to release a message in response to the Orlando
tragedy. One comment he made was “Like the rest of the country, Houston
is grieving today. It is past time for us as a country to come together
against hatred toward any person or persons based on group affiliation – enough
is enough. We stand with Orlando, with the families of those killed or
injured, with the LGBT community and against violence anywhere.”
Later
today, Mayor Turner will hold a press conference where he is encouraging
Houstonians to attend tomorrow’s Pride Festival and Parade downtown. HPL
will have a table. There will be a memory board encouraging people to
share their thoughts and feelings. HPL will digitize and display it
online. Also Mayor Turner is announcing the Houston Stands with
Orlando/Any of US, All of US initiative. A handout was distributed with
more information. It will be posted with the minutes. Mayor Turner
has called on Houston to lead at this difficult time, to come together in
support of the LGBT community and against division and violence anywhere.
He would like Houstonians to create Houston Stands with Orlando support
videos. Liz encourages individual and team participation. If you
film a team video, please send it to Liz and Leah. They will work to
ensure it gets posted to the HPL social media channels. You can also post
it to your own social media channels but we want to promote any team videos
that are done through HPL as well. Mayor Turner’s goal is to make Houston
the most Inclusive City now that we are considered the most Diverse.
Location
Updates:
·
Stella
Link had the Lift-Off Houston orientation Wednesday night. There were 70
people in attendance. Over 20 of those people signed up for library
cards.
·
Frank/Meyer
staff did an outreach at a single mom’s shelter at First Presbyterian Church in
Meyerland to share HPL resources that would benefit them.
·
Southwest
Express staff participated in the second annual Education Expo at the
Multi-Service Center. It was a resounding success. Over 20 vendors
and three dancing groups gave performances. Over 250 people were in
attendance. Liz thanked Christy for spearheading the effort.
·
Robinson/Alief
staff did some quick thinking when a scheduled petting zoo program didn’t
show. Jayla and the youth team pulled out sidewalk chalk as well as
crafts to ensure the 129 kids in attendance didn’t leave disappointed.
·
Collier
is having a Star Party with Lunar Planetary Institute featuring the Discovery
Dome, star crafts and refreshments.
·
Flores
is covering several area outreach requests.
·
Montrose
will be offering e-publishing classes and writer’s workshops.
·
Stanaker
has been providing staff to Flores when they are short or need to cover an
outreach.
·
Johnson
is hosting a tour next week for 150 students from a nearby school and has been
providing weekly programming for children from the Sunnyside Community Center.
·
Scenic
Woods is working with Nicole on the “Groomed for Literacy” program and has a
Little Free Library that will be at the proposed barbershop with expectations
of adding more shops.
·
Council
Member Cisneros is paying for two interns to be at Moody, Tuttle, Carnegie, and
Flores. They will be tech teens that will focus on tech programs.
Liz thanked the host sites for their flexibility in making it work.
·
Heights’
Baby Yoga program is so popular that they have to limit the amount of people
attending.
·
Corey
at Hillendahl did a great job at finding a slow leak before it ruined a lot
more of their collection.
·
FamilySearch
has signed an agreement with the Digital Public Library of America to expand
access to the over 270,000 titles in the Family History Book digital project.
(books.familysearch.org) Clayton and HMRC have nearly 10,000 books
digitized from our shelves within this collection. This opens up those
collections to a world-wide audience.
HISD: Progress has occurred on the Learning
Link initiative. We are close to having a completed data sharing
agreement. Both sides have mostly agreed on the language. It is now at
the stage where each side is signing the six official copies of the agreement.
The August CE Managers meeting will include training on Learning Link, so
attendance is mandatory. As we have been talking to HISD and making
presentations to various groups, HPL is seeing an increase in outreach
requests. Expect to have outreach tables at school functions or give
presentations about our resources to the school. Some requests will come
through CE Admin and others will come directly from the school. Please do
everything you can to accommodate them. If you can’t, please contact your
Sr. Manager or Liz or Laurie for help. They will find additional staffing
from other libraries or come out themselves. We want to continue building
this HISD relationship and nothing will sour the relationship more than schools
being told we can’t help you.
Announcements: (Laurie)
·
Even
though the Learning Link campaign hasn’t been officially launched, several
colleagues have already been making presentations to HISD staff causing
excitement and interest in HPL and our resources. Last week, Jennifer
Myers did a presentation to a group of about 80 principals and campus leaders
as part of a Professional Learning Series program. She talked about
Brainfuse, Learning Express Library and Tumblebooks.
·
This
week Kelly Patton did a presentation, with help from Jennifer, at Hartman
Middle School to middle school teachers. Mancuso staff helped by staffing
an information table.
·
Wednesday,
Edgar hosted a group of instructional technology HISD staff to give them an
overview of HPL’s resources and we’ve already been asked by two of them to come
to their schools.
·
In
July, BLU/VIN will staff tables at the Elementary School training sessions and
in August, FIF/FLO and KAS/LAK will staff tables at more middle school training
sessions.
·
HISD
is excited for us to go out and visit their schools.
Laurie asked the group for any ideas for alternatives to the red outreach
suitcases because they are fairly bulky and difficult to maneuver in and out of
cars. If you have any suggestions for a different way to supply
outreaches, email her. Remember that you can request additional pens,
pencils, post its, and magnets to replenish your outreach kit from Celeste via
email. If you see great giveaways from other outreaches, grab a
sample. Send it to Laurie and suggest it as an additional giveaway for
next year. She will investigate the possibility.
HEAR: Beginning July 1st, you
should begin evaluating non-supervisory staff. You have until the end of
July to get the ratings into the system. The Training Portal has some
help sheets to walk you through the steps. The training classes at LDC
are full.
Beginning
August 1st, supervisor reviews can be completed and are due by the
end of August. Remember, plans for staff need to be put into the system
within 30 days of the completed review. In July, Liz and Sr. Managers
will have some suggested goals for the 2017 reviews.
If
you need a training transcript for a staff member, email HPL Training.
Please include the staffer’s name, ID number, and dates you need in the
email. Leilany has returned and is working hard to input all the
information that was sent her while she was out. Also note that
supervisors can give employees credit for other training that they’ve received
such as summer food if the supervisor knows that the staffer completed the
training and it was work related even if it’s not on the transcript.
Notary
Service: Notary Training
has been tentatively scheduled for Thursdays, July 14th and 28th.
Another was added for Friday, August 5th. An email should come
out next week, so staff can sign up through the Training Portal.
Staffing: CSC interviews took place earlier
this month. We are now waiting for start dates. PT CSC interviews
are scheduled for next week.
Group
Presentations: Because
we have so many speakers in July, we have postponed the group
presentations. One group was also postponed in August. A second
group will go on as planned. Liz and Laurie will have a revised schedule
of group presentations at the next meeting. Presentations may extend into
2017.
Mary Wagoner: Mary thanked Dominick and the YOU
staff for weeding in preparation for the move to the new building. She
also thanked Fred and the LMS staff for getting the opening day collection
ordered in time.
GSD
and SPACES are interested in hearing how the custodial staff is doing at your
locations, so you will be receiving a custodial survey soon.
Digital
Strategies: (Robert
Bliss & Emmanuel Merenini): The new reservation station company has
resolved the glitches in the system at Central. The pilot will move to
other floors now. Robert will be creating an instructional video on the
new system and what will be seen from the customer’s point of view.
The
system interacts more with Sirsi and will not require a different PIN
number. When a customer forgets their PIN number you will be able to give
them a paper guest pass to use for the day. At this time, continue
issuing computer cards until this new service rolls-out at your location.
Eventually, computer cards may be eliminated. IT is working to get all
kiosks will be getting card readers so that customers can just scan the barcode
on their cards.
The
new system offers a time extension option of fifteen minutes as long as two
other computers are still available. Staff will be able to use an
interactive button to send messages to a single or group of desktops, for
example to warn them of the location closing. If a customer walks away
from their terminal, you can kick them off by a click. The system will
automatically reboot when customers log off.
Managers
asked if there was an option to select the computer you want to reserve.
This is especially helpful for parents with children, who want their kids
working on computers that are near them. Robert said it doesn’t currently
but he will look into it.
If
a customer misses their turn on the reservation system, it will read “no
show”. Staff will be able to pull up a list and see the no show
message. There is currently a limit of 5 no shows allowed. Policies will
need to be made to determine if that will stay the rule. Staff should
stop seeing the 999 errors. If you visit CEN soon, stop by one of the
reservation stations and see what they’re like.
DS
will be putting Windows 10 on public computers soon. Staff terminals may
get it soon. DS is looking for laptop dispensers and the ability to use
your library card to check them out. The new print stations will be
taking credit cards and DS is looking for the ability to scan to a USB device.
If
you have other questions regarding this new system or other DS related
questions, email Laurie.
“Not my job
Mentality”: (Christy
Chang, Vanessa Gempis, Tony Goodwyn, Beck Gorman) The “That’s not my job
mentality” is a common epidemic in all jobs. Reasons for it include not
feeling empowered to make decisions, being unfairly compensated for challenges,
or lack of motivation. Employers need workers that are team players, who
volunteer for tasks, are flexible, skilled and take initiative. Those who
exhibit the “not my job” mentality are perceived as having a bad attitude and
not invested in the job. They may be ostracized, passed over for
promotions and eventually fired. The cost of this syndrome to the
organization is poor morale, poor work perception, more stress and higher
turnover.
To
combat that mentality, frontline personnel should pitch in and help whenever possible.
Ask how they can make things easier for others or have a smoother
process. People will react positively and notice. When you do need
to say no, try to redirect the request and be helpful. Do it for the
right reasons. Take on responsibility; consider making tasks that are
often requested of you part of your normal work routine. If the task is
part of your expertise, negotiate for time and resources to get it done.
This will help you market yourself in a new way within the organization.
For
leaders, you should create a consistent and unified vision. Avoid turf
wars; determine what the common focus of your team should be, and be an example
and model good behavior. Distinguish between a job and role. A job
is a description of your work and a role is how you contribute as a team
member. Communicate best practices to all team members. Set expectations
clearly and publicly. Praise good teamwork and motivate teammates.
To
find incentive for the job, take time to develop an employee motivation plan.
Have a checklist. Respect your employees and listen to their needs. Help
them see what they’re doing is meaningful. Be proactive and don’t wait
for staff to complain. Have job variation to combat boredom and help
retain employees. Provide recognition to performing staff, foster
innovation, and give and receive feedback. Communicate effectively and
share information. Give staff clear job descriptions and
accountability. Let staff take ownership of tasks.
Youth
Services: (Sara Pope) In-house Hispanic Heritage Month programs are due today by
COB. Each location is required to offer 1 children’s
program and 1 tween/teen program. Summer Reader has over 14,000 juveniles
registered and there are over 1,700 adults in SRG. Sara stressed the
importance of awarding prizes properly in Evanced. If your staff needs
additional training, contact Angela Barratt at COL via email. To award
prizes to a group, they should contact you one week prior to them coming to
collect them. Don’t give them prizes from your location’s supply.
Contact Sara or Rebecca and they will send you the prizes. Make sure you
click the gift icon on the group’s account.
The
10, 20, and 30 level prizes will be going out in delivery today. You are
only getting one box of trophies until more are received. If you need
more logs, certificates or stickers contact the Print Shop. If you need
more calendars, try contacting the Print Shop for a PDF version that you can
print out. If you have other SRP needs, you can contact Michelle Johnson
in KIDS.
Everyone
should have received their bikes, except for Fifth Ward and Melcher. Sara
and Rebecca will contact the winners of that prize directly. You will not
be responsible for that. Managers wanted to know if they should have the
bikes on display the entire summer. Sara said use your judgement,
especially during the 4th of July holiday. Ideally, you should
store the bike in a locked closet or office during that time.
SRP
performer evaluations need to be completed for all performances, even those
that were a no-show. It is good practice to contact the performer a few
days prior to the performance as a reminder. Ensure that your YS staff
has a back-up program, in case of a no-show. Also, if you use your back-up
program, make sure you prepare a new one.
For
Camp Wonderopolis, if customers come with their certificate that they printed
out, make sure to award the sticker properly in Summer Reader by putting the
date and word “Wonderopolis” in the entry. You will need to award the CMH
museum passes differently. Go into the patron account and under got
program prize, just click yes and then click save.
The
August Youth Services meeting is mandatory for all YS staff. That is when
the Learning Link training will be conducted. Sara asked for managers to
update the names of their Youth Services staff on the Youth Roster found on the
Youth blog.
Houston
Public Library Foundation: (Phyllis
Hodges) Phyllis is the Philanthropy Coordinator for the HPL Foundation.
She is also a librarian from New York and received her degree from the Pratt
Institute. The Foundation advocates and fundraises for HPL.
Launching Thursday will be a new more interactive website. Patron
comments will be posted and HPL staff will be highlighted. https://www.houstonlibraryfoundation.org/ This will serve as a larger platform to
communicate the unique services that HPL provides the community. Phyllis
wants you to share customers’ stories about the difference the library has made
in their lives or the community. The Foundation has received a grant from
the United Way to purchase microwaves and refrigerators for those locations
serving free lunches this summer. Phyllis also requested that everyone go
to the Charity Navigator website (www.charitynavigator.org) and search for Houston Public Library
Foundation. The Foundation is trying to raise their numbers. They
are also trying to raise money through iGift and Amazon Smile during the
shopping season in November. Here is Phyllis’ email (p.hodges@houstonpubliclibraryfoundation.org).
Being
Authoritative Among Different Generations & Personalities: (Laney McAdow, Jayla Parks, Tim
Siegel): Soon there will be five different generations interacting in the
workplace and this can create conflict. Effective communication can help
manage it. Supervisors can take advantage of the different levels of
experience and age in their employees by offering mentoring and partnering
amongst them. For example, veteran employees can teach new hires
organizational policy and procedure while the new hires can offer more tech
driven instruction in return. You can build teams by bridging the
generational gaps.
Working
with different types of people can create conflict and work suffers, stress
levels increase and the entire team is affected. Conflict is rooted in
several differences: work style, background, and attitude. The background
difference can create a bias. Attitude differences can be of a
competitive versus cooperative nature. In extreme cases, it can lead to
sabotage. For supervisors, it’s important to accept that your approach to
the problem is not always right and embrace other’s perspectives.
Identify your personality and work on cooperating with others’. There
isn’t a single management style that works for everyone.
Try
having staff take a personality test. Humanmetrics.com has free
ones. For this presentation, the Jung/Briggs Meyers one was used.
It can describe work style, behavior in certain situations, decision making
preferences, and how you relate to others. The results can explain
aspects of behavior but not excuse them. Use the test as a team building
tool and evaluate your employee’s results to inform your management
style. Consider how to communicate better or make better use of their
time. Try and avoid pigeon-holing staff. People are more than their
personality types. There is no substitute for getting to know your staff.
Focus
on staff strengths. Get the right person assigned to the appropriate
task. Choose your battles, or it could cost you time and stress.
Evaluate how staff work and communicate. Give constructive feedback
sandwiched within other positive comments. Embrace or acknowledge the value in
all personality types. Don’t focus on one group, or avoid another.
Banned
Customers: (Laurie): All
locations need to have at least 2 flyers notifying you of banned
customers. CE Administration has become aware that one of our permanently
banned customers has returned after it took years to get her barred from all
locations. Please make sure all staff is aware of these flyers. If
you don’t have them, please contact Laurie and she will get them to you.
Manager
Commitments: (Jose
Santoyo, Jenny Phengdara, Sylvia Espinosa)
Jose
has tried to schedule staff to work at the service desk two hours at a time,
but other task commitments have impeded the process. Staff members want
more time to get other tasks done. He has been bringing food to staff
meetings and having ice breakers to begin them. The ice breakers aren’t
always successful because most of the staff know each other very well and have
been working together for a long time. Jose doesn’t want to have to force
them to share things that they prefer stay private. He has chosen to do
more team building exercises instead and staff has responded enthusiastically.
Jenny
has established an anonymous suggestion box at Robinson. It has led to
comments about staff not leaving their station until they’re relieved and
checking in holds. She has cross-trained her staff to assist with various
tasks and has created a new Youth Services team. They have already had a
teen comic day program at the library that had a big audience. The team
also reorganized the graphic novel section. Jenny has also worked on
recognizing staff accomplishments at team meetings.
Sylvia
has worked on revamping the LST blog to update information and provide better
communication. A staff member who no longer works for HPL had been doing
the blog, so she worked to familiarize herself with the blog and has found that
staff member Holly would like to work on the blog. Information regarding
each floor of Central has been included. Sylvia has also recognized
accomplishments at her team meetings. She reads patron compliments aloud
and hosts games that help staff familiarize themselves with Central and HPL
services. She offers prizes like choosing your own schedule. She is
working on creating an in-house training team that will partner with new hires
and has begun to do small group training, so it’s more focused and
personal. She is looking for experts for each task.
Next month’s speakers on commitments will be Jennifer Sessa, Kelly Patton, and
Dena Melvin.
Team Building: CE Admin asked the group to think about
revamping the awards at HPL. All were asked to come up with new team and
individual awards along with new ideas on prizes. Suggestions included a
“Courage under Fire” award for handling an incident well or a “Lemonade Award”
for making the most of a difficult situation. The prize suggestions
included getting a good parking space or getting a genealogy tree done.
All suggestions were given to Laurie and Liz. They will review them and
Liz will take the best to ELT.
In attendance: Iona Joseph, Leonore Hu, Craig
Bertuglia, Tim Siegel, Sara Pope, Jenny Phengdara, Tony Goodwyn, Chris
Arrowood, Vanessa Gempis, Kathrine Myers, Melissa Ryans, Fred Schumacher,
Felicia Brisco, Melissa Hayes, Derrick Spearman, Melinda Campbell, Dominick
Spinelli, Maggie Sepulveda, Diane Doyen, Jayla Parks, Donnie Byrd, Jennifer
Myers, Maria Powers, Robert Lewis, Monica Siboldi, Patricia Ogea, Tula Gorden,
Tega Zoma, Jesus Villegas, Laura Montegrande, Nathan Stokes, Danielle Wilson,
Laney McAdow, Sylvia Espinosa, Billy Glasco, Christy Chang, Alexandra Drake,
Jose Santoyo, John Merullo, Richard Hurst, Julia Bradley, Drew Alvey, Edgar
Fuentes, Tara Hornbeak, Cylenthia Hoyrd, Nhu Le, Marcia Denton, Christopher
Patrick, Gary Lackey, Virginia Williams, Helen Chou, Sue Kaufman, Angela
Barratt, Rebecca Denham, Melissa Gwinn, Alma Avina, Paty Bustamante, Karen Luik,
Hellena Stokes, Michelle King, Kelly Patton; Guest: Phyllis Hodges, Emmanuel
Merenini, Robert Bliss; CE Admin: Elizabeth Sargent, Laurie Covington, Mary
Wagoner, Pedro Fonseca, Patrick Atkins, Djuina Hammett, Leah Fraser, Celeste
Diaz, & Yolanda Anguiano
Next meeting is at CEN’s Program Place on
Friday, July 22 from 8:30AM-12PM.
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