A year after senior administrators announced a mission statement that pledged to suffuse Duke's workplace culture with the values of trustworthiness, learning, teamwork, respect and diversity, several new training opportunities have sprouted. But as expected, a complete culture change is still years down the road.
Nevertheless, many officials and employees report some shifts in Duke's work environment, especially through the handful of new, redesigned or long-existing sensitivity training sessions and skills-enhancement programs. These programs, recently injected with the May 1999 statement's five overarching themes, focus primarily on training for supervisory staff.
Also, officials are currently assessing training programs for lower-level staffers, finding ways to streamline the programs and make them available to a broader range of employees.
While some workshops focus on brushing up skills for work in a specific department, others allow employees to learn the ins and outs of an entirely new, higher-paying profession. Currently, administrators are trying to streamline these career mobility programs, eliminating overlap and making them more accessible to a broad group of employees.
Julia Anderson, who works in dining services, took a nine-month mobility program in 1999 and is trying to land a clerical job somewhere else at Duke.
"My son knew more about computers than I did.... I wanted to improve on typing skills, word processing," she said. "[But] when you don't publicize, who's to know about it?"
But these programs have only reached so far. Housekeeper Spencer Hicks has never heard about any workshops available to him, but he said he felt some of the trickle-down results from management training programs.
"It seems like in our department we have a closer bond in terms of communication..., getting things across, working as a team," Hicks said. "It seems like lately in meetings it's been more of an open forum."
In its attempt to create a culture change, the Duke community has much history to surmount. The transfer of the Duke family tobacco fortune to a university in Durham may have signified a shift from industry to education, but 75 years later, many employees believe that plantation traditions have not disappeared from the Duke legacy.
Although employees do not indict Duke as a poor employer, some said they had encountered individual supervisors or managers who fit Duke's plantation image-a description that many employees recognized as fairly common. Housekeeper Vincent Matthews estimated that about half the supervisors and managers with whom he has dealt could be characterized as "the dictatorial type."
"Sometimes I've met up with people who have a certain upper-class attitude toward certain people, but there are some who are just average people who want to be friendly," Matthews said.
Many University departments did not need administrative encouragement to recognize that they needed to take on these issues. The staff of Perkins Library, for example, has been working on diversity training since 1998. Through the Office of Institutional Equity, the library sponsored several workshops for its entire staff.
Reference librarian Eric Smith said that although the program he attended was worthwhile, he has not recognized any cultural changes since training began.
"I'm one of the people who had not noticed a problem but other people feel there is one," he said. "Other than the good spirit that came out of the presentation... I have not noticed any changes in behavior-especially because I didn't think our behavior was that bad before."
Administrators and employees acknowledge that creating a cultural overhaul is easier said than done.
Jennifer Goldman and some of her colleagues took a course on customer service a few months ago but she said they may be lapsing into their old behavior already. "[My co-workers] try to be more in-patient and out-patient friendly," said Goldman, appointments coordinator for the orthopedic appointment office. "It's good to get the employees involved, but some things are going back to the same way-[like] how people forget to be customer friendly. They're still learning."
Administrators realize that despite the inclusion of their five key values in training programs, orientation activities and literature about Duke's employment philosophies, results will not be seen for a long time.
"It's an effort that will take a number of years before we're able to clearly identify changes that may be clearly attributable to these efforts," said personnel librarian Sharon Sullivan, who is coordinating Perkins' staff development programs.
As they work to improve Duke's workplace culture-as well as the perception of Duke as a plantation-type employer-officials acknowledge the history that came with the University's namesake.
"I don't think it's an accurate portrayal of Duke but it's out there," said Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, one of the top administrators who signed the mission statement. "We have a lot of history to overcome. It probably goes back 75 years [since James B. Duke endowed the University]. If you look at a lot of the Dukes' employment practices in the first half of the 20th century, I wouldn't want to defend them."
Director of Communications for Human Resources Deborah Horvitz agreed, adding that an improved workplace environment will not appear overnight.
"It's basically by definition a culture change and that will take years and years," she said. "You can't just say, 'We're emphasizing respect this week.'"
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