Vanderhoef and Grey said they asked the management group to develop recommendations for streamlining the way the campus does business to make it easier for staff members to do their jobs. Markgraf and other managers said many in their ranks are becoming burned out as they pick up extra tasks from staffs already stretched to the limit. Their offices rarely can afford to pay for staff overtime or give them compensatory time off, they said. Everybody's working long hours. The need for more staff extends beyond academic departments to administrative service units such as Accounting and Financial Services, Benefits and Human Resources, he and others said.
Some offices are closed half the day so staff can keep their heads above water.
Managers said they frequently work into the evening or on weekends to keep up, with some putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks. Some managers said they cannot afford to take vacation time and end up losing it. There's no time to plan, to talk about what everybody's doing, about what I could be doing to make things better. Less service to faculty, more work Filby of the land, air and water resources department said staff members are providing less service directly to the faculty as they take on more administrative tasks and handle less photocopying and word processing. They're feeling that if somehow staff were more efficient, we could do more.