Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Look to Whitworth Weekly as Your Primary Source for Info and Announcements

The Whitworth Weekly e-newsletter is into its third month and we are learning some important things that we want to share about this new form of employee communication.
  1. While usage stats show Whitworth Weekly is widely read, we need to clarify that it is expected that employees review every issue of the e-newsletter – especially the “Top Stories” section, which contains important announcements from cabinet, HR, the business office and other departments. These articles provide information that employees need to know, and many of these messages no longer will be distributed individually by campus-wide email. If it is difficult for you to access a computer on a weekly basis, please alert your supervisor.
  2. We strongly encourage you also to review the “Campus Happenings” and the “Whitworth Events” and “Whitworth News” listings. These easy-to-skim sections provide information about activities in the life of the university. Our goal is to significantly reduce the number of individual campus-wide emails, while also ensuring that our community is aware of upcoming events. To help address concerns about the latter, each Friday Julie will send out a Whitworth Weekly supplement, listing upcoming events that may have been included in the previous issue or that were submitted in the interim.
  3. Most announcements or information that affect all employees should be published in Whitworth Weekly. Please contact your department head or cabinet officer about including something as a “Top Story” in the newsletter. If you want to promote an activity or event, you can submit that directly through the “Campus Happenings” form for which there is a link in every newsletter. Content submitted by Monday at 5 p.m. will be included in the following Tuesday’s newsletter and in the Friday supplement.
As a reminder, the Whitworth Weekly e-newsletter is intended to be a primary and efficient form of communication with all faculty and staff, reduce the volume of individual e-mails sent to the entire campus, and provide opportunities to connect (electronically, at least) members of our growing campus community. We appreciate your help in achieving these goals. We will conduct a survey at the end of the semester to gather input on ways to improve the newsletter.

Greg Orwig
Chief of Staff – Office of the President