MNIT Meet and Confer minutes May 1, 2019

Publish Date
Committees
MNIT

 

Meeting Minutes: MNIT Meet & Confer

Date:                                         5/1/2019

Minutes prepared by:         Andi Morris

Location:                                  Centennial Office Building

Old Business

Service Desk Consolidation

  1. Nothing concrete at this time.
  2. Gathering information about who will be moved financially and physically to Enterprise Services, expect people will be moving July 1 (FY20)
  3. Most will stay in their same position in the org chart, under the same supervisor, in the same physical space. Some changes will likely occur as time passes and services are optimized.
  4. Management said they will be contacting employees ASAP and letting them know what to expect
  5. All dependent on moving to rates, Governor’s budget

MetroPass Subsidies

  1. Working with Met Council for a MetroPass agreement with folks at Pine Street; planning the same subsidy that Dept of Admin is currently offering to those on Capitol Complex
  2. Next step will be to talk about rolling out to all MNIT staff
    1. Will need to be discussions with @ Agency staff, etc
    2. Need to understand demand, who isn’t getting a subsidy, reach out to business partners
    3. Still plan to conduct a survey of MnIT staff outside of the capital complex to gauge interest

Brown & Bigelow

  1. Safety officer is working with DHS facilities management
  2. There should be a staging area where people can safely get to and be safe in the event of a fire
  3. Told safety officer that this needs to be taken care of quickly
  4. Should have an answer by the next meeting, if not before

Rotation of MNIT staff

  1. On HR/management’s “to do” list; current  priorities are:
    1. Catching up on job audits
    2. PM training initiative (many MAPE members involved)
    3. Automating onboarding processes (many MAPE members involved)
    4. Standardization of System Architect classification
      1. May have different class options for different types of architects; see System Architect Matrix on MNIT’s Intranet
  2. Job rotation concept is still under consideration

Onboarding & New Employee Orientation at other agencies

  1. How do we get staff in agency based offices to understand rules in the building? Management asked for MAPE’s help - what specifically do you want to know about working in agency locations. Please provide a list of items that HR can share with its HR partners at other agencies.
  2. MAPE would like the room to be booked for an extra half hour after the welcome meeting so we can present. The question was asked if new staff would be required to attend. MAPE’s answer was that attending the extended time was completely optional. Chad and Justin agreed to discuss with staff and get back to MAPE.

Critical Service Interruption Emails

  1. Some fluctuation in the frequency of emails, but overall improvement
  2. MNIT logo is now imbedded in the email so it doesn’t look like spam
  3. MAPE will continue to monitor and provide any feedback

Employee Recognition Policy

MAPE had sent a request to the ERC that major MNIT awards such as project of the year or employee of the year have a monetary award attached to them.

  1. There was some disagreement over whether this decision was up to HR or the Employee Recognition Committee (ERC)
  2. Commissioner Poirier was a strong proponent of employee recognition
  3. Management agreed to discuss it with Commissioner Tomes and agreed it’s a relatively small amount of money we’re talking about to monetarily recognize employee/manager/team/project of the year recipients; following are the challenges:
    1. The biggest issue is the funding source – where does the money come from – partnering agency or Enterprise Services (if ES, need to budget for it)
    2. Could potentially use salary savings (but most of those savings are MNIT partnering agency dollars)
    3. Justin will ask CFO’s about how to fund MnIT awards at MNIT’s Financial Governance Team Meeting.

New Business

Affirmative Action Plan

  1. Previous policy expired 8/2018
  2. Chad discussed this with MMB (who needs to approve the plan) and expressed disappointment that it hasn’t been approved to post yet.
  3. Since the meeting, MNIT’s Affirmative Action Plan has been posted. You can find it on MNIT’s Career Page.

MAPE requests 30 day notice whenever multiple staff are being moved from one location to another

  1. MAPE would like to be able to meet with those who are moving to address concerns
    1. Ideally, management would be there to address concerns as well
  2. Chad agrees that as much advance notice as practicable should be given to affected employees
  3. Management noted that they may not always be able to commit to 30 days because sometimes business needs change quickly, but they will do their best
  4. HR might not know until a request is made to change the employee’s location – need to make sure this is communicated quickly

Request to post revised flex and telework policies from 11/1/17 minutes

  1. Jed asked that the agreed upon changes to the policies be posted. Was an oversight and policies will be posted soon.

What remodeling is happening on 5th floor at COB? Are any relocations planned as a result?

  1. No decisions have been made about relocations at this time
  2. Some conversation about @ Agency staff from DPS relocating
  3. Figuring things out but everything is with good intentions
    1. Justin asked for MAPE’s cooperation in calming fears and seeking out additional information on their member’s behalf and work cooperatively.

Legislative updates

  1. Most of the things moving forward affecting MNIT are being rolled into the state finance omnibus
  2. Still have request for Enterprise PMO, rates package
  3. New announcement regarding MNLARS today
  4. Governor’s office is aware of the impact to State employees

Logo wear – request formal approval to use MNIT logo for clothing orders done on personal time

  1. Justin talked to the procurement person
    1. If we’re using any state resources to advertise, we need to be careful about who we’re using. Need to do a solicitation and create a contract. Would then be able to open the contract to others. Dept of Admin may already have something on contract.
    2. Will be clear that this is not uniform (not mandatory work wear).

Budget update – any budget issues like those at DHS that Kassie asked about via email in mid April?

  1. A couple weeks ago, a MNIT @ DHS supervisor said everything is fine while another supervisor said the opposite
  2. A single message was requested by MAPE employee who was told to ask Chad
  3. Justin: There was a meeting last week to discuss Temp Unclassified positions, but it extended into a conversation about DHS budget concerns
  4. Chad: Don’t really know based on what’s known at this time with the legislature still in session. Supervisors have been told of the uncertainty and should be passing that message along rather than giving positive or negative messages.
  5. Justin: We know that budgets will be smaller so we need to prioritize things. Preference to cut contractors first, cut permanent employees only as a last resort. Try to make up by leaving positions vacant, allowing temp unclassified agreements to expire, etc
  6. An email went to BA Managers and a few others, a BA got ahold of it and passed it along
  7. Business might be making decisions to end projects, but that’s not being communicated to MNIT Management
  8. Even if projects do end, that does not mean employees will be let go – ideally, they will be placed in other roles

HR newsletter – comments from MAPE

  1. Seeing the information in the newsletter is helpful and much appreciated
  2. Good information included, great to have resources
  3. Will be quarterly
  4. There was a lot of debate about whether or not it should be shared with everyone, or just managers and supervisors, MAPE expressed that they were glad it was shared with all staff.