Outstanding staff are critical to the efforts of our faculty, students, and trainees, and we cannot achieve the fully diverse and inclusive environment we aspire to unless we deeply embed those values in the selection, training, support, and advancement of our staff. We are striving to establish clear pathways to employment for diverse, talented individuals; to build programs that support their growth and development; and to provide compensation and benefits that allow our staff — at all levels of the organization — to thrive.

To that end, our efforts include:

• Programs that support work-life balance. The Live Near Your Work program provides financial assistance toward down payment and closing costs on homes near our campuses. We’ve enhanced benefits for child, adult, and pet caregiving needs. Our breastfeeding support program offers 20 mother’s rooms on various campuses and provides online and in-person consultations. And we created a new website, Hub at Work, a resource-packed section of the Hub website dedicated to the needs and interests of everyone who works at Johns Hopkins University.
• Building new and different talent pipelines. With a particular focus at present on entry-level hiring and development, we are working closely with the Johns Hopkins Health System through HopkinsLocal to expand the university’s participation in programs that help draw entry-level talent. We are also exploring new opportunities for hiring through extensive community outreach.
• Professional development for staff seeking to advance their careers at Johns Hopkins. We are expanding and developing cohort-based mentorship programs, and, in response to feedback received through the Gallup employee engagement survey, we are simplifying the university’s performance review process to facilitate honest dialogue between supervisors and staff about performance strengths and areas of opportunity.
• Increasing our diversity. Since fall 2010, underrepresented minorities have increased from 14.8 to 16.9 percent of our professional staff, and from 27.5 to 31.5 percent of our technical staff. This increase in diversity is not yet consistent across all departments, but it is reflected at all levels. During the same period, URMs at the executive level increased from 13.1 percent to 14.8 percent of senior employees.

Photo: James Page is interim vice provost and chief diversity officer for Johns Hopkins University.