University Career Architecture Project Update

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University Career Architecture Project Update

To: The University Community

From:

Allison M. Vaillancourt, Vice President for Business Affairs & Human Resources
Jan E. Myers, Director of Compensation & UCAP Project Director

Subject: University Career Architecture Project Update

Date: March 26, 2019

We are writing to let you know that we have decided to delay full implementation of the University Career Architecture Project (UCAP)* until January 2020, rather than going live this summer as originally announced. Our analysis suggests extending the timeline will be in our University community’s best interests. While many factors led to this decision, we want to share the two most important and also describe our next steps.

KEY FACTORS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED A REVISED IMPLEMENTATION DATE

There was greater than expected interest in being engaged in the project. We have been surprised and delighted by the amount of interest in UCAP from employees, supervisors, and organizational leaders. The fact that 96% of the 11,000 positions in scope were mapped by departments within our established timelines demonstrates an intense and impressive level of engagement. Rather than delegating these decisions, hundreds of leaders and supervisors asked to meet with our project team to learn more about the proposed structure so they could properly and fairly map their employees to the new job architecture. While these meetings consumed more time than we had anticipated, the conversations were productive and informative and they helped us improve upon the initial career architecture design. Given these changes, we need to revisit our original market analysis in order to develop the final pay structure.  

We want to ensure that the university community understands the new career architecture and where positions have been placed. While we are pleased with the level of supervisor engagement, the meetings and conversations required a greater investment of time than we originally anticipated. Given this, we believe it is prudent to set aside more time than originally planned to ensure that employees understand how their positions have been mapped to the new architecture, have an opportunity to validate their relative positioning, and have an opportunity to ask questions before the go-live date. Live training sessions and webinars that explain the new career architecture are being developed for both employees and supervisors.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

Appointed professionals who are used to receiving annual contracts may wonder about how this revised project timeline will affect them. We will be issuing contracts that extend until January 26, 2020, with a plan to convert employment to University Staff status effective January 27, 2020. Classified staff who choose to move to the new University Staff will also make that transition on January 27, 2020. 

University Staff employment policies are currently under development and will be shared widely for community review and input in the near future.

We continue to value the input we are receiving from the University Community and especially our UCAP Advisory Council and other shared governance partners. The UCAP project team will continue to provide regular updates for the duration of this project.

Visit ucap.arizona.edu to keep up with the project and to view more resources related to UCAP.

*As a reminder, UCAP was launched to support career progression, provide reliable market data to inform pay decisions, and create a more cohesive culture by replacing the current classified staff and appointed professional categories of employment with a single employment category.

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