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Subject Matter Minute, Episode #39 – LinkedIn Learning

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 #39 – Video LinkedIn Learning

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 on YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to another gritty episode of the subject matter minute. All right, I know the show is not gritty by any means, but sadly I actually have had to edit out a couple of things that I thought was funny, but others didn’t… you know? Speaking of that… once again we are walking on eggshells as state employees. There’s grim budgetary news. Because of this, this couldn’t be a better time to expand our skillset or strengthen our skill set. The State Library just recently signed a contract with LinkedIn learning that gives us access to their huge library of excellent courses. Some of you may have used it in the past, it was called lynda.com, but LinkedIn bought them out. They have a huge library of professionally produced training on a wide range of topics. Check this out.

When you sign in with your library card this is the page you will see if you want to see all the subjects just come up to library and hover over it okay and then you can go down each of these main subject areas to see all of the courses available and they have divided it up into topics software and learning paths I’ll go over that stuff more here in a bit but you can see we have a huge amount of courses available to us.

Let’s back up a second and show you how to get access to the LinkedIn library courses. You need a Wyoming library card to do this. In order to get your State library card to access all these courses and all this other
fabulous stuff the library has, you need to go to library.wyo.gov. There’s probably several ways to get there, but what I did was went to ‘using the library’ ‘for state employees,’ and then down to ‘get a library card.’ That opens a new tab. You fill this out. Because of COVID, right now, you will be emailed a library card number and password,and eventually, we’ll all get physical library cards once COVID- 19 is over.

Once you have your library card number and a password you’ll come to this page gowyld.net. There are probably several ways to get there again but I’m gonna go to ‘job and career support,’ and then you’ll see LinkedIn learning down here with lynda.com content. If you click on that it brings you to this login page. I’m gonna go ahead and put mine in and login. Now we’re back to that page I showed you before.

I’m gonna go into this a little bit more so first of all that you see at the top we have popular learning paths. Learning paths are really handy because they basically group a bunch of courses in certain topics, and they do it for you so you don’t have to search for them. Here’s a learning path called ‘become a manager,’ it has eight courses in it. ‘Become a project coordinator’ ten courses… these could be good learning paths for state employees. You can also click on ‘see all’ to see all the learning paths that they have put together. As you can see, there are a lot. In each section there are learning paths with many classes in them. You can see ‘to become a project manager’ has 17 hours worth of courseware in there. This is good stuff.

I want to show you here when you first come in new is selected in this row. These are the new courses. You can scroll through here see what they got. ‘Customer service,’ ‘financial wellness,’ ‘talent management,’ … good stuff for PMI. You can also sort it by ‘popular.’ A lot of ‘time management’ up at the top, Microsoft stuff… now I’ve been asked many times where people can get Microsoft training… this is gonna be great stuff for those folks. Then they have some recommended courses. Also ‘popular your organization.’ I’m not sure… that must sort eventually once more people have come in.

If you’re looking for soft skills, perhaps you go to business, and you look at ‘leadership,’ ‘management,’ ‘communication,’ ‘productivity.’ Let’s just go to productivity. Looks like they have weekly videos they make, and then, of course, a lot of the stuff that folks are looking for these days… setting limits on your smartphone, learning zoom. A lot of us are using zoom these days so that could be a good one, and I’m sure they have more than just the basics… they go into advanced modes. Self-motivation, reducing tension… So you can see the kind of things they have.

Now let’s go into a course. Let’s go into ‘learning zoom.’ I just want to show you how they’re set up. It’s very straightforward. It’s video based. I did come in here earlier and checked it out. You can see the ones that I’ve already watched because they show the little eye. Since I’ve already watched them, then you go to the next one. You can see the transcript down here, which is great because it shows you where they are in the words, and you can actually click on the words to skip forward to that spot. If you are watching this from the beginning to the end it’ll automatically go from video to video, otherwise you can skip around find something that you have a question about. ‘How do I record and review meetings,’ and just skip right to it.

As you can see this is set up really nicely and you will find that the video quality is quite amazing. These guys know what they’re doing and they’re professionals. Apparently, LinkedIn produces all of their own stuff in-house.

You can also make your own playlist. You can go through all their courses, find ones that you want to watch in the future, and add them to your playlist. Let’s just go into business analysis foundations. Now, I didn’t actually have to go into it to add it… I’ll go back and show you, but you can add it to your playlist by clicking right here. Let’s go back. You can also add it to your playlist by clicking the plus alongside any of the courses.

This is fairly new to me too. I just wanted to get this information out there so people can hit this right away. I did use lynda.com a while ago… years ago, so I’m somewhat familiar with it, but I’m gonna be diving in checking it out. I didn’t show you all the features, but it’s really straightforward and well-made, so get in there and check out the courses.

I’ve only really gone over LinkedIn learning in this episode, but I would be remiss to not mention the hundreds of other resources that the State Library has for us. Check this out.

This is the home page of gowyld.net. Here you’ll find all the topics and resources available to state of Wyoming employees. So these are all the subjects. You can get ebooks, audiobooks, magazines… so much stuff available to state of Wyoming employees. Let’s go back into job and career support since that’s what we’re talking about today. You have access to Learning Express Library, and here’s LinkedIn learning as well. Look over here, there are auto repair manuals. There is a section for learning a language… enunciator. There’s tests and Skills prep. These are all available to you for free.

Again, on the homepage you can see all the subject areas… so as you can see there are a ton of resources out there to help us expand our skillset, strengthen our skillset, or perhaps just to help us get through these trying times. I truly encourage you to get in there and check it out. I guarantee you will be impressed with the quality of the productions. Ok, that’s it for today… good luck to all of us during this (most recent) stressful time at the state. See you next time.

Subject Matter Minute, 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 #23 – HRD vs Agency HR

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to another SMM, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me. Today, I’m going to get right to the topic at hand. I have to admit, I got my first, somewhat negative, comment last month about my ramblings about my personal life, and I’m going to spare that person this month and jump right in. 🙂

Ok… lemme ask you. Where do you go for answers about state employment, about our state jobs? This is a huge organization, and there are tons of things to know about. In fact, I asked today and the total number of folks currently working for the state is 8,387! Big organization… so, benefits, procedures, rules, etc. where do you go? Well, besides straight to the Subject Matter Minute archives!

Well, we happen to have a bunch of people who are here to help us. Today I’m going to talk about them. They are…. (musical graphics with Agency HR and HRD)

Alright, so we have both Agency Human Resources and the Human Resources Division. What’s the difference? What do they do?

First of all, they both work together to support the state employee. They are two different entities, in a way, but they work together for us.

First of all, let’s talk about the Agency Human Resources folks. These are the HR pros that work for individual agencies. Now there are some smaller agencies that share an HR person, and there are some even smaller agencies and boards that do not have their own HR person, so they can contact HRD for questions. But most state employees have access to an Agency HR person.

Agency HR is the go to for questions regarding payroll, benefits, workplace issues, ESS password resets, retirement, PMIs, disciplines, FMLA, sick and annual leave, address changes, name changes, etc. Agency HRs will often times will be familiar with an agency’s employees and therefore the best first point of contact.

The Human Resources Division is part of the Dept. of Administration & Information and is Enterprise wide. They work for everybody. HRD works closely with agency HRs to work through issues regarding compensation, classification, PMIs, Personnel Rule interpretations, grievances and appeals and more. Most times agency HR will be able to answer questions related to these topics. If clarification is needed, they can request assistance from HRD. HRD is always happy to talk to state employees, however depending on the situation, HRD may request that the employee to speak with their Agency HR to try to resolve the issue.

HRD is governed by Wyoming Statute § 9-2-1022, which says that they are in charge of classification, compensation, employer-employee benefits, maintaining employee information, recruitment for all state agencies, training, etc. They also have to approve any agency changes related to personnel. So things like compensation, position class, transfers, job titles, positions and leave, personnel rules, grievance, appeals, performance appraisals, etc.

Ok? So everything that comes out of agencies in those areas, have to be approved by HRD.

HRD also works closely with the Governor’s office and the State Auditor’s office to implement any employee related directives. So, for instance, if there is a pay increase passed by the legislature, HRD, with SAO, will work through the legislation and determine the percentage increases. Then, as part of that process, Agency HR implements the pay increase via payroll transactions, and then, again, HRD will review the implementation.

So, through these sorts of processes… HRD is attempting to promote consistency state wide, which is the main goal for HRD.

Ok… so there is HRD, and there are Agency HR folks. You now know the difference. If you don’t know who your agency HR person is, please find out now. They are there to help you with almost anything.

Of course you can always check out episodes of the SMM to find answers, but I promise you that the HR folks know WAY more than I do. They are HR folks for a living and I just play one on tv!

Ok… thanks for joining me on the subject matter minute. Come back next time where I promise I will talk about my personal life!!

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!