Processes – Page 3 – Subject Matter Minute Blog

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #24 – Surplus Property

The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it’s a little hard to read, it’s because it’s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: Episode #24 – Surplus Property

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive. (I would prefer you view in YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me. First of all, I want to say that I forgot to thank my subject matter experts for last month’s episode, and that’s silly because this is the Subject Matter Minute. I want to thank Tricia Flores and Tricia Bach, both of HRD, for getting me the information. It was on the difference between HRD and agency HR. I’m hoping that I helped out with that confusion… I’m hoping I was clear enough. This month I want to thank Casey Baxter of surplus property. I asked him quite a few questions, kept peppering him with emails and he got me all the information.

Before I get started on that information that Casey got me I’m curious how many of you out there have heard of minimalism? I think there’s a Netflix documentary on it, and you hear it occasionally in articles, but basically it’s an anti-consumerism movement where you have less stuff, you purchase less… it’s just about decluttering. Well, I think it’s a good idea. I think it helps the environment, the earth, I think it helps your mental health, because you have less stuff to deal with, and of course it helps your pocketbook. You save money if you don’t buy stuff.

All right, I feel like I need to say here that if you guys saw my garage you would not think that I’m a minimalist, okay? But I’m trying. I’ve gotten rid of quite a few things, and I think I’m more aware of purchases.

But on that note minimalism, today I want to show you guys how to get more stuff! [Music]

Wyoming’s surplus property… today I want to show you how to register for an account on the auction site, and how to use it. The process that I’m showing you today is for how to make a personal account, because anybody can buy off of this. If you need to become an authorized user for your agency, you need to contact surplus property. You can contact them at 777-7901 or ai-surplus@wyo.gov.

First I’m going to show you how to register. There are a couple verification steps, but it’s pretty simple overall. First of all you go to publicsurplus.com, and click on login. Next you want to click on register.

You need to fill out all the required information. You can tell that it’s required because it does not say ‘optional’ next to it. You also have the option of choosing ‘call me’ or ‘send me a text message’ for one of the verification things. Personally, I’m gonna do a text message. It’s quicker and easier I think. You’ll see what I mean down the road. Then you need to make a username and password.

Once you got all that you come down here and you read the buyer agreement. If you have questions about the buyer agreement, you can come up here, click on chat, and you can do a live chat. Ask them your questions and get back to work. Or you can email public surplus at support@publicsurplus.com. Once you got your questions out of the way, and you’ve read the buyer agreement go ahead and click ‘I have read and accepted the buyer agreement,’ and click register.

Once you’ve done that, you come to this screen where it says account created, verification is next. This is where you’ll need to check your email and get the eight digit code that they send you. Check your email and here’s the information code. Click on this link, like they asked you to. It brings you back to public surplus and it actually auto-filled the code and my username. At this point go ahead and click confirm email.

Now what it’s going to do is send you your text message or call you, depending on which one of those things you chose, with another code. What they’re doing here is just making sure that they can contact you… they’re not going to give out your information to anybody. Go to your phone – either answer it, or check your text, add the phone confirmation code, and click confirm phone.

Once you do that you get this screen that says thank you for confirming your information your account is now active, so you can click on the login, and type in your username and password.

When you first get in, the very first time, this is a handy little feature. What it says is you can select categories, regions, and miles from a given zip code, and let public surplus notify you when something new comes up. So if they match something to your preferences they’ll send you an email. I’m gonna add a couple things. I’m gonna say building stuff. I like tools. I’m gonna add that. I like hardware. I’m gonna add that. I like flooring. Then I’m gonna come down here and choose Wyoming.

Now choose your email notification frequency. You may want to change from daily… depends on how much stuff you need I guess. You can say ‘do not send them’ or change it to weekly, which is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna save that. Now I’m gonna go to browse. I am now registered and ready to go!

The first thing to know is that you are actually looking at everything, everywhere. Public surplus doesn’t do this for just the state of Wyoming, they do it for all sorts of organizations and state entities. You can buy from any of these places and odds are pretty good they’ll ship it to you, so feel free to shop here, but if you want to do something more close to home, you can start right here. We’ll select a region, and we’ll go ahead and hit Wyoming. Then we’ll select an agency… I’m gonna select state of Wyoming.

This brings up the side navigation. You can also click ‘view all auctions for the state of Wyoming,’ and that will show everything. Currently, there’s about two pages worth of stuff. Let’s look at industrial equipment. You can see how much is in each section. It shows you over here that you’re in industrial equipment and here’s all the subcategories and we’re in woodshop… there’s three items in there.

Let’s go ahead and look at motor pool, I think a lot of people buy cars off this. Here’s the current pile of cars they have available. You can navigate through this through the categories or you can search. I’m gonna look for that denali. If I knew exactly what kind of car I wanted, or what kind of piece of equipment I wanted, I can search here and it’ll bring it up. This baby’s about to sell, there’s only 53 minutes left in this auction. Let’s take a look. Just click on the title and it’ll bring you into the auction. Currently it’s $19,299, looks like forty four bids have been made. That’s the auction info and then down here is the description of the vehicle. It says it’s in great condition. Then, if you go lower, you can click on the images and take a look at it. This denali does look like it’s in good shape… a gas hog, but it’s in good shape. You can look through all the pictures, click the X to shut it, then if you decide you want to bid on it you come on over here to the side.

Something you need to read and understand is how this works. It says “public surplus will place incremental bids for you up to the maximum amount you are willing to bid using proxy bidding. Your maximum amount is only visible to you. No other bidders will know what your maximum bid is. If there’s a reserve price, your bid will go to the reserve maximum, and then any amount of your bid over the reserve amount will be in a proxy bid.” It’s like eBay, if you’ve done eBay. Basically, you can put a maximum in there, and then it’ll keep bouncing up to your bid as long as you haven’t hit your maximum. Another important thing to read is right here. Remember, if you bid on these, and win, it’s yours… you have to buy it. So basically, you put your number in there, you hit submit, and you’re off and running.

Some auctions might extend. There’s a slight difference between this and eBay. You know how it is on eBay… everybody rushes in at the last second and tries to win. This extension tries to avoid that. Basically, it gives everyone an opportunity. if you bid in the final five minutes of an auction, it’s end time will automatically be extended for five additional minutes. This will continue until no bids are placed within the last five minutes. That may mace make some of you upset… those that are used to eBay, but it makes it more fair and it’s not just a person who’s really good at getting that last-second bid in that wins. So that’s something to keep in mind for sure.

On a lot of these items there’ll be questions that are asked, and you can ask a question as well. You just click here… you can see what the questions are, and the answers. You can also ask a question by clicking here. Go ahead and type in your question and hit save and they’ll answer it for you. Okay, now you want to return to auction, and you want to put your $25,000 in there, and click Submit. That’s how you get it done.

Honestly, I hope that more people would subscribe to the idea of minimalism, and maybe not buy a bunch of stuff, but sometimes you just need stuff. So check out the state of Wyoming surplus property auction site to see if you can get a good deal! I’ll see you next time on the Subject Matter Minute.

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #9 – Retirement Goal Calculator

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #9: Retirement Goal Calculator.

Welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute. I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me.

Sometimes here I say “hello fellow state of Wyoming employees,” but I
got to admit, I’m feeling a little bit lonely right now. Last episode, I asked
you guys to post your favorite hair band, or a hair band concert from the 80s down below, and I got exactly zero responses. So it could be a couple things here…either I am the only gen Xer out of the 900 or so of you that watched the video, or perhaps you’re embarrassed to admit that you liked hair bands back then? I know there’s a lot of people that make fun of that era but you know music is what it is… If it makes you feel good you like it, and it made me feel good. I loved it!

So you can go back to that episode and comment if you want to or,
you know, no pressure… you don’t have to do that at all, but I’m hoping I’m not the only gen Xer out there!

Before I go on I want to thank last month’s subject matter expert, which again was EGI. Thanks guys for getting me the information.

Today’s subject is actually a tool. I’m going to show you the retirement goal calculator!

The retirement goal calculator. This is a sweet tool put out by the Wyoming retirement system just a month or two ago that can help you decide if you have enough money saved for retirement. Obviously, this month’s subject matter expert is the Wyoming Retirement System. Specifically Polly Scott. She was the one who pointed me in the right direction for this and thought that this would be a great thing to show you guys first. And, she answered some of my questions, so thanks Polly for helping me out!

I’m gonna take you there, show you how to do it, and run you through a couple scenarios. The nice thing about this thing is that it’s simple and that you don’t have to go find your taxes and financial information and input all this stuff. It does some figuring for you and it keeps it simple.

Here’s the retirement goal calculator. You find it by going to this URL: http://retirement.state.wy.us/en/DC/Goal-Calculator Once you get there scroll on down. It’s really quite straightforward. I’m gonna throw in some numbers just to show you how it works.

First Step in Retirement Goal Calculator — Please click image for larger version

Let’s just say my current annual income before taxes is $45,000. That’s your annual income. I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna need 90% of that in retirement. How many years until you retire? Basically it’s about 15 years in reality so let’s put that in. How many years do you estimate that you’ll be retired? Well, considering that I have a 99 year old grandpa who is still building houses at this point I’m gonna say at least thirty. Thirty is the max in this calculator. Once you fill those in you can see your retirement goal is $40,500, which is ninety percent of $45,000.

Please click image to see larger version

Let’s go to the next step. This is social security. This is kind of an estimate, but as you can see here, it gives you some numbers. Mine’s between twenty and fifty thousand, so let’s just say that maybe you know my income will go up a little bit and by then I’ll have fifty thousand a year… let’s say twenty five percent. Now you can see once you do that it fills in a little bit of this graph over here. So right now you’re getting $11,250 a year. You haven’t quite made it there.

Now let’s go to the next step. At retirement, how many years will you have been employed? Basically, I will have been employed 33 years if I stick it out with the state. This is the one thing you do need to know… which tier you are in. I’m a Tier two employee because I came in late.

Please click on image to see a larger version

Oh my! Based on my inputs, I should exceed my desired income! You can see it right here… my retirement goal was $40,500, and my estimated retirement income will be $40,950. That’s basically because of the years of service.

Please click on the image to see a larger version

Now I’m gonna adjust my goal. This time let’s do a scenario where I am not saving enough money and will need to save more. Let’s do $45,000 here. Let’s say that I want a hundred percent of my income. I’m going to still say fifteen years till I retire and I’m still going to want that to last thirty years.

Let’s go to the next step. Let’s do the same thing here… 25 percent.

Next step. Let’s just say that I’ll only have been employed for twelve years, and that I’m still a tier two employee.

Next step. Now there’s another step that wasn’t there when I was saving enough money. Now they want to know how much you’ve saved in retirement on the side. I’m gonna say $10,000 in an IRA or something like that. You know the rate of return is usually like 7% to 8%, let’s just say 6% to be safe.

Next step. Okay, I have not saved enough money by any means! You can see that I’m about halfway there. When I retire I’m only gonna be making $22,000 every year and it gives you a number that you’ll need to save every month until retirement. Hopefully yours isn’t nearly as shocking as that number!

So run some scenarios, change up how many years you work for the state or how much retirement you have saved on the side, or whatever… just run some numbers and see where you’re at. Hopefully this will help you out.

I hope you found the retirement goal calculator useful. Hopefully when you put your numbers in there you were really close to having what you need or maybe even over, and if not, you know you can talk to the retirement folks about the deferred compensation, or find some other way to invest the money.

Thanks again to Polly Scott of the Wyoming retirement system! I want to thank her for getting me the information, and for putting together the
calculator, and I’m sure we’ll be talking to her a lot more down the road about more stuff! That’s it for this subject matter minute, have a great day and we’ll see you next time!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #7 – Medical Reimbursement Process

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #7: Medical Reimbursement Process.

Before I get started on this month’s subject I want to talk about the Eclipse. I know that’s kind of a dead horse that’s been beaten in Wyoming, but I was lucky enough to see it in totality, and it was amazing. It was unexpected. I know you’ve heard this from your friends if you didn’t see it in totality but if you didn’t, you need to go chase it in seven years when it goes across the states again! It was super cool.

I was lucky enough to be a part of a big group at Glendo. Ten months ago we reserved three group sites. You had to do it ten months ago, and we had to kind of stay up all night trying to get in, but we did. I was thinking, “what’s what’s the big deal?” I also thought it was kind of expensive. I just wasn’t all that excited, but I am so glad we did.

You know how everyone was saying there was going to be thousands and thousands of people there? Well there might have been, but as you can see by this picture… all of these people are my friends. This is during the Eclipse, during totality, or really close to totality… there is nobody on the beach but us. So we got lucky.

Wyoming Eclipse Group of Friends

Also, when we reserved that campsite, they forced you to do four nights so we didn’t leave till Tuesday morning. We didn’t hit any of the traffic. That being said, I think that 90% of the folks that got stuck in traffic for hours would probably say it was worth it. Again, I thought it was completely unexpected and amazing… the totality part… the rest of it was “meh.” So next time, seven years from now, chase it and go find it!

I’ve got to get to the subject matter because it is a little bit long again. This is a continuation from last month’s episode. I need to thank the subject matter expert, which is EGI (Employees’ Group Insurance), they are also this month’s subject matter experts. Thanks again to EGI.

This month I’m gonna go over the medical reimbursement account process. You use the medical reimbursement account to pay for out-of-pocket expenses. Of course, you’re gonna need documentation/proof that you had these expenses, so we’re gonna go over that… that’s what this is about.

There’s a couple ways you can do this… kind of the old-fashioned way, where you hand in papers, or submit by email, and there’s also a new online portal to submit all your documents. Whichever way you decide to do it, there’s a few things you need. You’re going to need the reimbursement claim form. (It has a much longer name that you’ll see in a few) You’ll need that claim form filled out. You’ll need supporting documentation… most of which is EOBs or explanation of benefits, and receipts and the like. And then for daycare, you’ll either need an itemized receipt or you can have a signature of the provider on the claim form. I will show you how to do that.

First, I’m going to show you how to gather all your stuff, then I’m going to show you how to do it the paper way, and then I’m going to show you how to do it on the online portal.

Let’s go find our EOBs, or explanation of benefits, on the Cigna website.

Go to mycigna.com, and go to the login page. If you don’t have an account, or if you’ve never done this before, you’re going to need to register. You will probably need your insurance card because you’ll need some of that information. Go ahead and do that and then you can log in.

Go to “manage claims and balances” and then down to “claims.” It’s
just showing claims for me (Matthew Nagy), but you can also go to all customers if you have more than one person. Right now I’m looking at this year… if you were doing this the following year, before March 31st, you could do ‘within previous year.’ Since I’m in the middle of the year still, I’m going to look at this as if I wanted to cash out early. Next, hit apply and now you can see everything.

I know some of you might be freaking out that I’m showing this but I really don’t care if you see who my doctors are. 🙂 So now this shows everything. You can see how many providers I’m going to have to list. First of all, this one I owe nothing, so that one’s not going to
be listed. This one we owe nothing, so that one’s not going to be listed. Only the ones that you owe on are you going to be listed. So it looks to me like we’re going to have four providers. As I mentioned before, you
can group them on the flex form. With Bressler, I would put the date range from May 26 to June 9th, and add these all together for the for the money line.

Now let’s talk about how you get your EOBs, because that’s why we’re here.

If you want to get your EOB, you click on their name and that takes you to the information page, and you can see the EOB right here. Now
what I do is right-click on it and open it in a new tab, because if you just
click on it, there is an issue. It opens it up in the same window. If you’re doing it paper-based you would print it, and if you’re gonna submit it online then you would download it now.

Now I’m gonna show you what happens when you go back when you
just click on it. You have to reload the page and continue, so that’s why I suggest that when you go to the EOB you right-click on it and open it in a new tab. Then it just opens it in a new tab and when you’re done with it you can close that tab.

I mentioned that you can group things but you’re still going to have to go into each one and print or save the EOBs.

So you go through all these… you print them or you save them, and you’re ready to go either to mail stuff or to drop it off down at EGI in Emerson or to upload it to the employee portal.

Now that you have all your EOBs in line, let’s go through filling out that form.

Here is the medical reimbursement and dependent care account claim form. That’s a mouthful! It’s pretty straightforward to fill out the upper section: agency name, agency number, your social, your name all that jazz. If it is a new address please check the box so they can update their records.

The medical reimbursement section is here. As I mentioned, you can combine sessions for the same doctor. If you have 4 different sessions to a doctor, you can go ahead and put their name in once, and the date range that those happened in. Then add all the money together for the amount box. Then add them all up and put the total in the total area.

The dependent day care reimbursement area down here is slightly different in that you need to get the tax ID of the provider and the name. Then add the date and the dependent that is being taken care of and the amount. You also either need an itemized receipt from the provider or the signature from the provider for the day care.

Skip the ‘office section only’ and go down to the bottom where you’ll sign it and date it. There’s a lot of good information in here… please read it because there’s instructions about how to submit stuff, and some of the rules associated with this.

So you have all your EOBs, you have your claim form filled out, now let’s go to the online portal and show you how to submit things that way.

You can find the employee portal on the egi website. Typically, you’re probably set up with egi with your state email, so just like other things that you login to (like Wyotraining and those sorts of things) you’ll log in with Google. Choose your state email and then you’re into the portal. It may make you do the two-factor authentication to get in, and you may have to get a number off your cell phone… so do what you have to and you’ll log into the portal…..

PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO ABOUT THE ONLINE PORTAL. THE TEXT ALONE IS VERY HARD TO FOLLOW. IT HAS BEEN DELETED.

We’ve got to end it here! Sorry these have gotten so long. I’m going to try to find some short subjects in the future, but you’ve got to cover everything sometimes. Thanks for joining me once again, and I look forward to seeing you guys next time on the Subject Matter Minute!

Here is the full episode!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #4: Grievances

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #4: Grievances.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute! Thanks for joining me. My name is Matt Nagy, and I work for A&I… specifically human resources division. I’m a trainer. Welcome to episode number four.

Before I go into that topic, I want to thank, once again, the subject matter expert from last month’s episode. Her name is Karla Smith, she’s fabulous, I work with her and she runs the mediation program for state employees. So if you have a problem that needs mediated… first of all, go watch episode 3 and then call, email, or chat up Karla.

Without further ado, we’re going to jump right into the episode number 4 topic which is grievances. First of all, I want to thank Russell Webb who works for hard and is the grievances and appeals guru. He is my subject matter expert for this episode. He got me the information, and it did it quick, so I want to thank you Russell.

Grievances are a dispute between you, the employee, and management. The dispute is about a statute, a rule, an executive order, or a policy concerning personnel practices or working conditions. I know that is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s important because there’s a lot of things you can’t grieve. So grievances specifically are about, again, a statute, a rule, an executive order, or a policy concerning personnel practices or working conditions. These are the things you can grieve.

Things you can’t grieve are:

Things that are out of the control of the agency head; things like compensation benefits, contributions, those sorts of things.
Discrimination
Dismissals
Involuntary separation due to a riff
PMI rating

Most grievances focus around something like a disciplinary action.. so a letter of reprimand, a suspension, or an involuntary reappointment. Basically if one of these actions occurs and you don’t agree with it, you can grieve. You can file a grievance with the agency head and then the agency head and you will get together and have a conference and try to hash things out.

That’s the first step. If you can’t hash things out, then HRD is called in. Once Human Resources Division is called in, they will form a grievance committee. Actually they help, but basically there’s three people on the grievance committee and you get to pick one, the agency gets to pick one, and then those two people pick the third. It’s kind of interesting that way, right? You get a grievance committee set up of three people.

Let me back up a bit. You get to pick a person, but there’s a lot of rules as far as how close they can be to you. Basically, they can’t be involved in the grievance in any way; they can’t work at either party’s agency; and they can’t be an advocate for either party. So basically they have to be unbiased and neutral. So while you do get a pick a person, and you would love to have a good coworker that you work with all the time or a friend, you really can’t pick those people. In my opinion, the best bet is to pick somebody you know is honest and fair and will render the right decision.

So the grievance committee is formed, and what they do first is look at the written record… basically the previous stuff from your meeting with the agency. They look at the facts, and then they render a decision. With the decision they can modify, they can affirm, or they can reverse the action that is the issue.

If they don’t, a hearing can be held. If the committee is unable to take the written facts and decide on the issue then the next thing is a hearing. A hearing is a little bit more formal in that you can introduce new evidence, and you can bring in people to testify.

So now the committee takes all the old information, the new information, and listens to testimony and again renders a decision. Again, they can modify it, they can affirm it, or they can reverse the action that is a dispute.

At this point the grievance process is really over. If you disagree with their decision you can appeal it, but the appeals process is involved and has multiple steps and timelines and is kind of separate. As far as we’re concerned the grievance process is done when they render their decision.

Keep your eyes open for another episode on appeals. I will do that down the road. Again, I want to thank Russell Webb for getting me the information on this, and you can contact him at russell.webb1@wyo.gov. I hope you don’t have to use the grievance process but it’s there to protect you. Thank you for making it through episode number four of the subject matter minute!

Here is the full episode!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #3: Mediation

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #3: Mediation.

Welcome to episode number three of the subject matter minute. Thanks for joining me again, I appreciate it.

I would like to thank last episode’s subject matter expert once again… that was EGI, or employee’s group insurance. They helped us out with vision benefits. Hopefully, if you were thinking about getting vision benefits or paying for that extra benefit, it helped you decide whether or not to do it. And if you already had it, hopefully it helped you figure out how to use it best.

Let’s get on with episode number three. This week the subject is mediation. Before I get started, I want to mention a couple things. First of all, I just ran through this entire episode, nearly perfectly, and then realized I wasn’t recording. So yeah, this one’s probably going to suck! Anyways… first of all, I want to thank this episode’s subject matter expert… Karla Smith of HRD. She’s a senior human resources consultant with HRD, and a co-worker of mine, and she’s a project coordinator that works on special projects as well. One of her special projects has been to head up the mediation program. All of her contact information is going to be below and after I explain everything about this, you can contact her with questions or if you need to use the service.

Mediation… what is it? It’s an informal process to resolve conflicts between employees. It’s really that simple. It’s used in order to not move on to other processes such as grievances. Let’s talk about some of the advantages of it. To begin with, it’s a voluntary process that’s offered to all state employees; it’s a fair process; it’s a confidential process; and really what it does, is it opens up avenues of communication. You know how it is… typically these problems are communication problems. It also offers the opportunity to resolve these issues at a low level instead of bringing in all the bigwigs and going through processes that require a lot of paperwork.

Next, let’s talk about what mediation is not. It’s not a substitute for discipline: discipline is a different process. It’s not therapy. Now, our mediators are trained, but they’re not trained therapists. It’s not telling others what to do, so if you’re coming into it thinking that you can tell the other party how to act or what to do, or that the mediator will… that’s not true. It’s not crisis intervention, so if there’s immediate threat or danger, there’s different processes for that. It’s not appropriate for all situations. And finally, it’s not magic. That being said… it works most of the time.

Let’s talk about the mediators. The mediators are volunteers that have volunteered to help in this area, and there’s several across the state. A mediator is an individual who’s attended training. They are good listeners; they’re a fair person who doesn’t take sides; they’re a person who can be trusted; they’re a person who keeps things confidential; and on that same line, they are a person that doesn’t make assumptions or draw conclusions based on stereotypes. Now I know that sounds like a perfect person, but these folks really are good folks that are volunteering to help you guys work out these problems. A mediator is not a judge or a legal advisor… they have training but not that kind of training. They are not a person who gives orders or advice… they’re there to bring you together and help you out.

Next, there’s a bunch of frequently asked questions that I’m going to kind of sum up because it hits a lot of the highlights.

The process is confidential.
It will not be in your personnel file.
You can’t be required to participate, and both parties need to decide that they want to use mediation.
The mediation process typically is scheduled for four hours. (if the parties haven’t quite reached an agreement, but they feel like they are progressing, more time can be allotted.)
Mediation is free. (there’s no charge for anybody)
It’s done by volunteers.
It’s a benefit of the state.
It’s not part of the grievance and appeals process; in fact this is an informal process meant to avoid that.
Workers compensation issues are not allowed to be mediated… that’s a different process. The issues that are mediated are employee interaction issues.
Mediation takes place in a neutral area of the mediator’s choice; typically they pull you out of your toxic environment and get you somewhere safe.
The time spent using mediation is considered work time.
The end goal is to sign a document that has an agreement of what everyone’s going to do.

This is not a requirement. This is an informal process, so if you don’t want to sign something you don’t have to. And finally, if both parties do sign a contract…

VOICEOVER ADDED TO FIX A MISSTATEMENT
(I don’t want to confuse anybody. I probably should not have said contract. It’s not a contract. We call it a mediation outcome. If both parties agree to it, they sign it. It’s not a legal document and the mediators do not enforce it.)

…and one of them doesn’t follow through, really your only recourse is more mediation or other processes such as a grievance.

So that, in a long nutshell, is mediation. I just want to say that life is too short, and we work too many hours a day to work in a toxic environment that is probably built on miscommunication or lack of communication. This is a great benefit… a free benefit… a confidential benefit offered to you and if you experience issues, please use it.

Here is the full episode!