Employees paid for time lost during storms

A total of 3,000 employees, including budgeted staff, student employees, administrative support and graduate assistants, tested UNF’s preparedness for emergency situations when Tropical Storm Fay forced the school to close for almost three days.

Lost time and productivity becomes an issue for the human workforce in cases where the crisis requires long-term shut down. But fortunately, Fay did not keep the school closed for any prolonged period of time, and employees didn’t have to worry about lost wages.

Employees are benefiting rather than losing in terms of their pay, said Rachelle Gottlieb, vice president for Human Resources. UNF’s crisis policy compensates for the hours staff is unable to work.

“We made the decision to put people out of work, and so they are still going to get paid, whether they are budgeted or hourly paid,” Gottlieb said.

But there is a distinction between the types of compensation employees receive.

“Essential employees who are designed to continue working during time of crisis will receive more time off in exchange for the extra hours they worked,” Gottlieb said.

UNF’s Crisis Management Team also sent out information through the UNF Update about how administrative employees will be compensated.

According to the update, they will receive time-and-a-half pay for hours spent at work during the three days, Gottlieb said.

Even though employees didn’t lose much from the three-day closure and delay of scheduled events, students who planned to start the semester in a few days were negatively impacted.

“It was rather inconvenient and stressful for me,” said junior psychology major Normandy Julmiste, who was among those trying to move into dorms the weekend of Aug. 22. “I was worried I will not be able to start the classes on time as I was supposed to.”

Julmiste said she found the information system of UNF satisfying and reliable, especially because of the university’s e-mail and information on the homepage.

During Tropical Storm Fay, the university did not use its voice messaging system because of insufficient minutes needed to inform all 16,000 students.

“This will not be an issue again,” said Shari Shuman, vice president of Administration and Finance and chair of the emergency response team. “The City of Jacksonville, who pays for the minutes and allows UNF to use them in the event of an emergency, has addressed that issue.”

Shuman also said she believes students’ own responsible behavior can contribute to effective action.

“We would like students to be vigilant when a threat like a hurricane is coming by checking their university e-mail, the UNF Web site and the myWings portal for updated information,” Shuman said.

However, there is no such information system for employees. Various departments follow their own individual procedures when it comes to informing employees about potentially dangerous situations on campus.

“Since I am part of the group that the president consults when it comes to making these decisions, I get the information fairly early,” Shuman said. “I have called and e-mailed all my employees to let them know that the school was closed. I also strongly encouraged other supervisors to do the same.”

Similar to the department of Human Resources, Wallace Harris, associate director of Physical Facilities, follows a standard procedure.

“It is a tree system where everyone knows who to call in order to spread the information to all of the employees,” Harris said.

The Crisis Management Team, the president and the chief of police all serve on the committee that determines the course of action in case of emergency and were satisfied with UNF’s response to the tropical storm. Therefore, “we have not made any changes,” Shuman said.

E-mail Andrea Farah at news@unfspinnaker.com.