Service excellence initiatives foster culture of service at FIU


Service excellence workshops, like this one for employees in the Office of the President, aim to create a culture of service at FIU.

Service excellence workshops, like this one for employees in the Office of the President, aim to create a culture of service at FIU.

By Joel Delgado ’12, MS ’17

When the Service Excellence Task Force was created by President Mark B. Rosenberg in 2013, the charge given to the co-chairs, Chief of Staff Javier Marques and Vice President of Human Resources Jaffus Hardrick, was simple: continue cultivating and strengthening a culture of excellence in service on campus.

Led by Division of Human Resource’s Director of Talent Management and Development Gail Hansen, the task force used focus groups, survey data, interviews and benchmarking for a six-month period to understand what students were looking for when it came to interacting with FIU.

With FIU now serving 54,000 students and still growing, Hansen and university leaders are implementing action steps drawn from findings with a series of ongoing service excellence initiatives on campus.

“The challenge around rapid growth in organizations is maintaining the desired culture because if not managed, it can get diluted or turn into something else,” Hansen said. “We want our students to have the excellent education and college experience they chose us for. Service excellence is about making FIU a great place for students, faculty and staff to thrive.”

The task force identified four key elements that collectively make up service excellence:

1. Friendliness, professionalism and care demonstrated in every encounter with students, parents, alumni and colleagues.

2. Knowledge and ability to provide advice and meet the needs of students, parents, alumni and colleagues.

3. Curiosity that motivates employees to solve problems and prevent problems from recurring.

4. Processes that make FIU employees easy to reach and easy to do business with.

These service qualities and skills serve as the foundation for the service culture of the university.

“As FIU continues to grow, we want to grow with our customers,” Employee Development & Retention Specialist Joliett Vega-Klucevsek said. “We want to have a service-oriented culture where students can learn and grow and so can faculty and staff.”

In order to do that, Vega-Klucevsek facilitates a number of service excellence initiatives, including the Train the Trainer workshop to equip program facilitators to train employees on service excellence.

She also spearheads the Service Excellence Champion Program, in which someone from each unit across the university helps “champion” the service excellence culture and lead its implementation in his or her respective unit.

From the beginning of the process, there has been sizable interest shown from many different employees, managers and other influential members of the university community in taking the lead in implementation.

“People immediately want to get involved and help in any way they can. It’s amazing,” Vega-Klucevsek said.

Claudia Gonzalez participated in the Train the Trainers program and serves as a service excellence champion in the Office of the President, where she is an assistant director of administrative operations.

Gonzalez is so passionate about service excellence and its importance for the university that she enrolled her entire unit as one of the first to receive training.

“Service excellence is all about the human touch, and when we say that every student counts, we mean it. And not just students, but everyone who comes to FIU,” Gonzalez said. “When someone steps on this campus and leaves, we want them to have nothing but wonderful things to say about FIU.”

Hansen and Vega-Klucevsek believe that serving others well will help FIU reach its goals – including higher retention and faster graduation rates.

Phase 1 of the program includes a large-scale training of employees who are in direct contact with students. Approximately 1,000 of these employees are currently being trained in daily service excellence workshops throughout October. These three-hour workshops, which will continue through the end of the year, include various scenarios involving interactions with students and other FIU customers.

Assistant Director of Graduate Assistantships Betty Sigler of the University Graduate School participated in one of the October workshops. Among other points, the training reinforced the importance of body language and  tone of voice when interacting with students in person and during phone calls.

“Coming back to work the same day, we asked ourselves if we were doing everything we could to answer students’ questions and give them the answers they needed,” said Sigler. “These workshops are extremely beneficial, and I hope many more sign up for them.”

Phase 2 will begin in January 2015 with monthly service excellence workshops for new employees and anyone interested in taking part. Managing Service Excellence, workshops designed to provide supervisors and managers with tools and techniques for managing service excellence in their respective areas, will be offered beginning in February.

For more information on FIU’s service excellence initiatives, contact your unit’s Service Excellence Champion or Talent Management and Development at TMD@fiu.edu or call 305-348-3206.

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