One-Stop Shopping for University Policies
Web site eliminates need for endless searching
What is the university’s policy on misconduct or travel? Does Ohio State have a policy on vacation donation? Is there a policy covering whistleblowers?
A new university web site features every policy governing Ohio State. Organized to be as user-friendly as possible, topics are sortable by content (e.g., business practices, governance, academics, athletics), alphabetically, or by audience (e.g., faculty, staff, student, visitor/vendor). The site can be found at osu.edu/policies.
“We tried to set this up so that people who find things differently can find their own way,” said Eunice Hornsby, a program director in the Office of Human Resources’ Organization and Human Resource Consulting. “Before the new site, policies were buried and hard to find. Now everything is in one place and policies will be updated through a single database.”
The web site simply links directly to the policies. A keyword search is available to avoid scrolling through extensive lists.
“This project is about using 21st century thinking and technology to ensure that university-wide policies are consistently developed, make sense, and are easy to find,” said Lynn Readey, deputy general counsel in the Office of Legal Affairs, who worked with Hornsby in developing the site.
Along with easy access, the site accomplishes some other important functions, such as dispelling misinterpretation of policy, added Rob Coleman, vice chair of graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and chair of the University Research Committee.
“Policies that are developed centrally, when they’re distributed to the units or departments, are subject to reinterpretation,” he said. “You’ll see travel policies being implemented in different ways from department to department, usually more stringently, and that can be a hassle. If someone in my college says, ‘No, the policy says this,’ I can now go find out what it says for myself. It can be proved or disproved very quickly. So it will help a lot of people do their jobs better.”
Hornsby agreed, saying many units and departments have documented their own standard operating procedures for years and cast those as official university policies.
“There might be a policy in a particular office, but it’s not a policy of The Ohio State University, so it’s invalid,” she said. “There are some things the university chooses to affirmatively adopt as policies, and standard operating procedures of subunits don’t fall into those categories. As a general proposition, university-wide policy prevails if there is any conflict with unit policies. This site will help people understand what is or isn’t a university policy.”
The web site can also be considered a launching pad for new policies. Information under the “About Policies” tab explains how the policy process works from start to finish, bringing transparency to something that hasn’t always been clear. Up to 20 different focus groups were consulted on the policy process over the past two quarters to determine what information should be included.
Human resources and legal affairs manage the process and will give policy creators help along the way. The “About Policies” tab links to tools, such as templates to create a policy, that make jumpstarting the task easier.
“The process for creating policies is just as important, if not more so, than the policy site itself,” Hornsby said. “We’re a community and policies are like our form of legislation. They represent how we run ourselves or the university, and we shouldn’t be forming policies in a vacuum. Transparency is a value of this institution.”