2019 Use or Lose

Don’t Lose Any Leave 

Now is the time to start planning to use any annual or personal leave you may be in jeopardy of losing. Faculty and staff employees eligible to earn leave may carry over a maximum of 50 days or 400 hours of annual leave into the calendar year. This maximum will be prorated for part-time employees working 50% or more. Additionally, employees are granted three personal days each calendar year. These personal days cannot be carried forward into the next calendar year. Therefore, any annual leave exceeding 400 hours and/or any unused personal days will be forfeited on January 4, 2020.

For contractual employees, the three personal days are available to use during the contract period and will not be carried forward to the next contract. As always, advance departmental approval to use this leave must be obtained.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Nitshu Joshi at 301-738-6114.

Peer to Peer Award

Congratulations to Bilky Okoh for being nominated by Steve Simon for the USG Employee Recognition Peer to Peer Award.

Steve Simon and Bilky Okoh (from left to right)

Description of Nomination: “Bilky is just one of these people who since I have arrived at USG this year, has been consistently helpful, courteous and prompt and professional in providing support to me on procurement and budgetary matter. She brings positive and supportive energy to her role and is always willing to answer my often “uniformed” questions about fiscal procedures and if she doesn’t know the answer herself, she always runs it down quickly and gets back to me. She is a great colleague and I just wanted to let her know how much she is appreciated for her efforts.”

Benefits Open Enrollment & Timeline

Open enrollment is entirely online this year, no paper forms or IVR will be available. Communications regarding your health benefits for Open Enrollment are sent via email. Please ensure you have a current email address in PHR. Please be sure to check out the Open Enrollment tutorial video.

Timeline:

September: DBM mails Open Enrollment Postcards to employee home

October 8: Open Enrollment Fair at College Park campus

October 15 – November 14: Open Enrollment

Tuition Remission Update

The waiving of mandatory fees for employees taking classes at the University of Maryland ends beginning with the Fall 2019 semester.

In 2018, the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits found that the Board of Regents’ Policy does not permit the long-standing campus practice of waiving mandatory fees for the USM employees who receive tuition remission for courses taken at College Park.

Going forward, to comply with the Board of Regents policy and with the audit findings, the University has agreed to stop waiving mandatory fees for employees, beginning with the Fall 2019 semester. Employees will now be responsible for payment of mandatory fees when receiving tuition remission for courses taken at the University of Maryland.

Please contact the Office of Human Resources if you have any questions.

Tuition Remission – Fall 2019

The Department of Univerity Human Resources (UHR) Office of Employee Benefits is now accepting tuition remission forms for Fall 2019. In an effort to ensure that your forms are processed on time, we request that you submit your forms to the Office of Human Resources before August 5, 2019.

Instructions for Regular Staff:

  • University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) forms are submitted online via the ARES website;
  • Forms for other USM institutions such as University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Towson University and the remaining institutions are submitted manually.
  • For more information, please refer to USM Policies and Procedures, Policy VII – 4.10

Continue reading →

Lynda.com moves to Linkedin Learning

On July 15 beginning at 8am. UMD’s e-learning tool (Lynda.com) will be migrating to the more robust Linkedin Learning system over the course of the day. During the migration period, users will be unable to log into Lynda.com. Once the migration is complete, an email from Linkedin Learning will be sent to users instructing them to activate their new account by logging in. Additional instructions and information can be found here.

July’s Lynda Course – Effective Listening

Listening is a critical competency, whether you are interviewing for your first job or leading a Fortune 500 company. Surprisingly, relatively few of us have ever had any formal training in how to listen effectively. In this course, communications experts Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes show how to assess your current listening skills, understand the challenges to effective listening (such as distractions), and develop behaviors that will allow you to become a better listener–and a better colleague, mentor, and friend.

Topics include:

  • Define attentive listening
  • Explore what happened when you are ‘distracted by delivery’
  • Recall what a mental filter is and how it can affect assumptions
  • Explore methods for choosing the best paraphrasing response in the situation
  • List the five listening intentions