Like other campus departments during the pandemic, Parking Services was unfortunately faced with seeking solutions to sustain operations during the pause in hiring and shift to remote work. Director Tom McGann (pictured right) had a solution.

"We had two vacant positions in our field staff (a 33 percent vacancy) and we usually hire an additional four temporary staff in the summer," said McGann. "I offered the opportunity to our customer service staff to work with the field staff this summer. This helped the short-handed field staff during our busiest maintenance season and also decreased a planned four week furlough for our customer service staff to a two week furlough plan."

(Pictured from left to right: Robyn Ronen, Marco Lara, Jesse Hinton, Andrew Wiseheart)

To ensure that this could be done without impacting employees' pay rate or their job description, McGann consulted with Employee Relations and a Position Management Consultant before implementing the change. 

A few of McGann's important takeaways include:

• Valuing transparency with staff by keeping them informed about what you know and don't know
• Conversing with staff by allowing them to ask questions and engage in respectful discussion
• Giving staff opportunity for growth rather than assuming they will or will not want to take on a new or different responsibility do something (like work in the field)

"It was great to see my team's willingness to try something new and embrace a positive attitude even as they faced furloughs," said McGann. "This allowed our staff to grow and get to know each better through working together. The Parking Services staff is always receptive to innovation, but over the last eight months our staff has shown a creative combustion toward implementing change."