Dear University community,
This week, Vice Chancellors Martini, Roberts, Leibold and Grisham began review of workforce reduction recommendations that resulted from the work done by Administrative Workforce Planning Workshop participants with Human Resources, budget and consultant support.
Next week, our goal is to provide shared governance leaders a summary that offers a clear picture of the scope of the reductions according to UWO employee classifications and divisions without identifying individual colleagues. While I refer to it as a “summary,” I am confident it will offer a level of organizational and financial detail that you expect and deserve, capturing layoff and voluntary retirement impacts on non-instructional academic staff, university staff and administration. Shared governance leadership will review that summary recommendation and provide me with feedback.
After shared governance leaders respond, I will make a final review and approve a plan. As we have previously shared, we expect to notify impacted employees in the middle of October, and that now looks to be the week of October 16. We will also reach out to all employees once the notifications are complete. Everyone can expect more detail on the notification process the week of October 9.
October will be a difficult month at UW Oshkosh. There is nothing I can say to ease this process or the impact it will have on colleagues who lose their positions. We are working hard to meet your expectation for transparency and, with deference to policy and law, respect affected individuals’ privacy.
After layoffs and voluntary retirements are complete, we will have much work to do to reshape our workforce and move forward with our strategic priorities. It is not an easy road ahead, and I thank all of you who are working so hard to keep us moving forward.
Chancellor Andy Leavitt