HR Solutions and Connections: Employee Newsletter
This monthly e-publication is for faculty and staff of the university. It provides timely information about university priorities, strategies and processes.
SEPTEMBER 2009—The Directory Is Going Green
Every year, Human Resources gathers the information to create a new Faculty/Staff Telephone Directory. This information has also been available online for many years.
Beginning in 2010, the Directory will be moving to an online-only format. All of the information that was found in the paper directory (such as individual listings, organizational charts, emeriti professors, voicemail information, etc.) will be accessible from the online version.
There are many reasons for this change, which are described below. But we still need you to provide us with up-to-date information so that the Online Directory is accurate.
Why We’re Going Online
Ensuring Current Information
The printed directory was a snapshot of Carnegie Mellon. We created the individual listings, departmental listings and related content from the data in our systems as of October of each year. By the time the Directory was distributed in January, it already contained errors, as people changed positions, moved offices, got hired or left the university. As the year progressed, the accuracy of the directory continued to deteriorate. An online directory allows us to pull information from the HRIS system on-demand, ensuring that only current information is displayed.
Reducing Waste & Saving Trees
The directory is over 300 pages long. That’s a lot of paper. While we have used paper with recycled content, each year’s crop of new directories still requires a great deal of new paper product. In addition, thousands of old directories are discarded by departments across campus when the new editions arrive. Even with recycling many of these copies, there is still a great deal of waste generated.
Enhancing Convenience
For years, Human Resources has received feedback that many people prefer the any time/any place convenience of the web. Web analytics show that use of the online directory is very high. In addition, searching on the web allows you to look up information in several ways – by last name, first name, department and/or Andrew ID, as well as partial name look-up. This can be extremely helpful when you aren’t sure of the spelling of someone’s name (or when you can’t recall the name at all). The paper directory only allows manual searching by department or last name.
Reducing Costs
In the current economic climate we are all looking for opportunities to better manage our resources. Costs associated with producing a hard copy directory included printing, shipping and delivery expenses as well as the significant staff time required to produce a printed directory.
We appreciate your consideration and support.
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