Ombuds program strives for courteous work environment

The Ombuds Office for Faculty and Staff continues to provide a place for all faculty and staff to come to resolve conflict, with a new staff member offering new perspectives on issues.

Steve Bauman, professor emeritus of mathematics, joined the office this fall, succeeding Roger Howard, associate dean emeritus in the Office of the Dean of Students. Bauman retired from the university in 2003. He joins Peg Davey, a consultant in the Office of Admissions; Ted Finman, Bascom Professor of Law emeritus; and Doris Slesinger, professor emerita of rural sociology. The four ombuds work part time and share duties.

“As a faculty member, I was involved in several areas that naturally led me to seek the ombuds position,” says Bauman. For 20 years, he supervised all teaching assistants (about 150) in the math department. He worked on issues involving many types of workplace situations among faculty, staff and students, including academic and nonacademic misbehavior, complaints and teaching assistant training.

Bauman also was involved in student life as a faculty fellow in the Bradley Residential Learning Community. In addition, he did advocacy work for AFT 223 and the Wisconsin University Union.

The primary role of the office is to provide an informal, confidential and impartial means for resolving conflict within the university. According to the office’s 2004-05 annual report, the group handled 59 cases in the last year. Twenty-seven of the office’s visitors came from academic staff, 10 from classified staff, 17 from faculty and five others. Forty of the visitors had been employed by UW–Madison for more than three years, and 15 had been employed here for three years or less. Thirty-two visitors were women, 27 were men, and seven were members of ethnic minority groups.

According to the annual report, more than half of the office’s visitors described various types of conflict or tension in the workplace, either with the person in authority, a co-worker or others in the organization. Other issues concerned salary/promotion, termination, lack of support, or problems with the organization or functioning of the unit. Many cases involved more than one type of problem.

Examples of concerns include strained interpersonal relationships between co-workers, lack of redress when a staff member is terminated during the evaluation period, concerns about job security when the unit is in transition, omissions of required steps in a hiring process, concerns about leadership and/or the budget situation in a unit, and unclear responsibilities and unrealistic expectations by a supervisor.

In many cases, according to the report, the ombuds helped visitors clarify issues and in nearly half of the cases offered options that the visitor hadn’t previously considered.

In a dozen or more cases, at the visitor’s request, the ombuds spoke with supervisors or other university staff to try to solve the problem. In seven instances, the office arranged for the visitor to meet with a university staff member who was in a position to help solve the problem. In six other cases, the ombuds acted as intermediaries in information mediation processes to seek acceptable solutions. If these efforts leave the matter unresolved and the ombuds believes that a visitor has been treated unfairly, the ombuds can consult with a dean, director or other authority for help on that level.

The office also addresses systemic problems. For example, the ombuds joined others to indicate concern about instances in which probationary academic staff employees had not received performance evaluations and were terminated during their probation without first having had the benefit of an understanding of how they might meet supervisory expectations. This year, the Academic Staff Assembly adopted rules to deal with the issue in the future.