New Business —

The RRB Committee had introductions and reviewed the charges for FY 2025

One of the difficult processes is finding out who’s retiring. The Endicott Society tries to reach those individuals. 

RRB no longer keeps a list of retirees since the information is difficult to obtain. 

RRB would still like to work with Endicott Society. Who is the contact if we need to send out updates to retirees? How often does HR submit items to retirees?  

Will send out meeting invite in November and see if HR representative can attend the November meeting.

Question asked if collective bargaining could potentially relate to retiree benefits specific to faculty. Amy shares that Retirees’ rights and benefits are not mandatory components of collective bargaining agreements, but some agreements may include them. Currently, it’s not certain what the agreement will entail. 

A question to take back to University Senate (for the committee) is the membership of the committee – we are missing USS and UPS retired staff so don’t have all the members on the committee. Is it possible to send out a call for volunteers as it’s the retiree positions that aren’t filled. Can we send out another call for retiree volunteers? 

The Endicott Society tried to do an outreach for faculty and staff that are about to retire and didn’t get much attendance. Outreach can be difficult, and not sure the best way to go about it:

• Possibly the survey could help this. Last year a standard charge included contacting retirees on a 3-year cycle. 
• A report was created from the 2023 survey which helped shape some suggestions for the standing + specific charges. If we’re going to have a survey, probably should start thinking about questions and thoughts. 
• Beth asks Dave about insights and thoughts regarding items that should possibly go into the survey as Dave has experience in this area. 

Dave’s study so far of results of faculty responses track well with the staff responses:

• KU is important to many retirees and dear to heart. The majority stay in touch with KU colleagues so they like KU – but 67% felt appreciated overall, and when asked about appreciated by department, the response went to 47%. The praise for KU is high but there starts to be drop in feeling appreciated.
• There is high praise for KU HR department, but feedback is they wish knew more about how to change health insurance. 
• A good measure of openness from responses – they want to assist University with its mission and joining retiree clubs. 

The survey was extensive – Dave thinks it could be a little more concise. This survey was more trying to see the most relevant questions. There is some time until the next survey but could start thinking about it. 

May be good to focus on some other charges. Some retirees say they weren’t told various things:

• It’s difficult to know if the information wasn’t shared, or possibly missed it. 
• May be good to review the information that is being offered.
• How to reach out to those who aren’t local is another question.

What about research materials – who does it belong to?  

Many items are on the cloud which retirees then don’t have access to. Don’t have IT and Microsoft access after retiring. 

There are budgetary issues with providing software to retirees. There needs to be security and support. Things also need to be maintained and updated. The question is how much access is reasonable as usually the security and support need to go along with. IT is open for discussion. 

To what extent do we want to understand “what is” - what is the quality of the information out there and available? Or are we wanting to advocate for things – for example, advocate for IT services. 

Beth has discussed the retention policies with Alicia Reed in Office of Research and the need to have clear information on the retention responsibilities. The retention of information is with Office of Research, but the data and supplies are more undefined area. What goes and what stays is not as clear. 

Should a future survey include all campuses? The current survey is with the Lawrence campus. The procedures are very different among the campuses but the One KU may help this. 

For November, plan to meet with HR. Think about questions ahead of time to discuss with HR.

Meeting adjourned.