URMIA Matters

Policy Updates with URMIA Board Member Julie Groves

February 24, 2021 URMIA Season 2 Episode 5
URMIA Matters
Policy Updates with URMIA Board Member Julie Groves
Show Notes Transcript

Hear about updates to URMIA’s Code of Conduct and Network Etiquette policies from host Jenny Whittington, URMIA’s executive director and Julie Groves of Wake Forest and an URMIA Board Member who led both volunteer groups in revising these guiding documents for the association.

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Thanks for listening to URMIA Matters!

Jenny: Welcome to URMIAmatters! I’m Jenny Whittington, URMIAs Executive Director. Happy to be hosting this podcast with one of my favorite co-hosts, Julie Groves from Wake Forest. Say hello, Julie.

Julie: Hey, Jenny. This is becoming a little gig for me on the side here, doing the podcast, which I really love, so thanks for letting me hang on to the microphone and the headset a little longer.

Jenny: Absolutely, we’ve been thrilled to have you, and you are such a great co host. I look forward to hearing many more Julie performances in the near future, so thanks in advance for doing that

Julie: Certainly. 

Jenny: We know it takes extra time to do this, but 

Julie: Happy to help, happy to help

Jenny: You’ve been very good at it.

Julie: Thank you, it’s fun. It’s a, I enjoy it a lot.  

Jenny: So today we are going to talk about two specific things. So the URMIA membership at large might be aware of both of these things, we’ve communicated it a little bit about it in the URMIA update, but URMIA has recently updated both our code of conduct and our network etiquette, os today we’re going to be focusing on those two things and I wanted to queue up the code of conduct conversation first because going back in time, I think it was late fall, when we started thinking about updating the code of conduct and just a little bit of history out there. When I started with URMIA back in 2005, I believe it was around, it was 2006 when we, when URMIA created it’s first ever official code of conduct, and it was Jill Laster from Texas Christian University who was on the board at that time and she had worked on her institution’s code of conduct, and I’m sure that URMIAs code of conduct may have looked a lot like TCUs code of conduct and it was a great, it was a great experience. I think the board was really proud of the document that they created and it got approved and we shared it with the membership and we put it up on the website and then every time we updated our website we updated it a little bit, made members aware of it, but really since 2006 that document had lived there on the website and it came to the board’s attention that it was probably time to really take a look at that document, and that’s where you came in, Julie. You put your hand up, and tell us a little bit about that. 

Julie: We really felt, like you said, we felt like it had been about 15 years since the code of conduct had really been looked at extensively. We gathered a group of volunteer folks to help us go through the code of conduct and we really looked at it very closely and we ended up doing a complete overhaul on it, and thanks really in large part to Stacy Kroll, who was then at Five Colleges. We structured our code of conduct around what we call the five pillars, and that sort of borrows from Stacy’s language and the five pillars are compliance with laws, regulations and association policies, respect for the rights and dignity of others, conflict of interest, protection and proper use of assets, and the accuracy and privacy of records and reporting. It also discusses violations of these standards and sanctions for doing that and we also offer avenues for folks to be able to report any kind of concerns or violations they feel like they’ve seen. So we, we spent several weeks working on that and once we got to the point where we felt we had our final draft, we worked with Praesidium to ensure that our policy was complete and so I think now we have a really great updated code of conduct. It’s much more cohesive and succinct, it’s much easier to use I think and so I don’t, we appreciate all the good work that had been done in the past and we just worked really hard to honor that and also bring the policy even to the 2020s, if you will. And so we feel very good about it and I do want to just thank our committee members because they were volunteers. 

Jenny: Definitely. 

Julie: And they did a great job, so I already mentioned Stacy Kroll, we also had Sandy Mitchell from MIT, Tracy Swift from Arizona State University and there were URMIA staff members, you, Jenny, were part of the committee and Gary Langsdale, so it was great to have all these different voices and experiences to help us work through these policies because nobody really loves, nobody really loves to take a code of conduct policy and update it. It’s not particularly scintillating, but we had a great time and I feel like especially with Stacy’s help, Stacy really has a heart for writing policies. 

Jenny: Yeah, she does! Thank goodness. 

Julie: I know, thank goodness because we might still be working on it if it weren’t for her, her input. But we just really appreciate everybody’s help on that. So we hope the members will find it a little easier to digest and to understand and to work with, so that was certainly our intent. 

Jenny: Yeah, definitely. I mean even I was really proud of the document that we used for all those years and it served us well, but over that much time things change and I think just certainly the world has changed and awareness of a code of conduct is a thing that I think most people are aware that organizations have a code of conduct and URMIA prides itself on good governance, yeah I’m really proud of the good work that you led, so thank you Julie for doing that for us.

Julie: Happy to help.

Jenny: All the URMIA members listening to the podcast, please, you’ve probably seen a message that’s asking you to agree to the code of conduct, and I believe that will happen once a year now. 

Julie: Correct, yes. That is our goal, to have that happen once a year and the other goal is for the board to look at this code of conduct and update it at no more than three years at a time. Like we won’t go more than three years without updating it. So hopefully we’ll be able to keep it fresh and keep it relevant and then we will ask members every year to agree to it so thanks for, I think Ronna helped set that up, so thanks to Ronna for that. 

Jenny: Yeah, big shoutout to Ronna. It was a new kind of project for us, so she did a great job with that and a shout out to Tim Wiseman from Wyoming, he was a great tester for us, so thanks to Tim. Another policy that I just want to throw out there while URMIA members are listening is our event safety policy. We had that, we had created that a few years ago specifically about being safe at our events, so if an URMIA member has any questions about that, I’m really proud of that policy too as just a sidebar, but the second part of this conversation, we’re going to talk about our network etiquette. When URMIA switched providers, I think it was maybe 2013, was when we launched the Higher Logic URMIA Network platform as we know it now. They had a template document of their network etiquette and when people agree to the network when you first logged in you took a look at those network etiquette rules and while the staff looks at them from time to time, that was another really piece of the puzzle of this kind of update, was to really look at the network etiquette. Julie, you also lead that task force. Now, I wasn’t a specific staff member on that task force but why don’t you tell me a little bit about the evolution of that project? 

Julie: Sure, so the, previously the URMIA network rules and etiquette document was six pages long. 

Jenny: I’m sure everybody read it! 

Julie: For those of you who have it memorized, we really appreciate that, but we’ve changed that, so sorry to disappoint. Yeah, so it was six pages long, and gosh, we just felt that that was just way too long, the document had just too many sections. Some of it contained outdated information, there was information in the document that was really actually contained in other places in URMIA policies or procedures and there were different roles for different groups, meaning the institutional members have some different roles than the affiliates and vice versa, which was confusing and so our main goal was to certainly shorten it but to also make it a lot easier to digest and for people to understand, as with the code of conduct policy, we did a complete overhaul on this document and we cut it down to one page.

Jenny: Oh my gosh! One page! 

Julie: Which is fantastic. We really, we just didn’t want it to go on and on. And again, no disrespect to the former rules and etiquette document ...

Jenny: I appreciate that. Thank you. 

Julie: Again, we want to honor what came in the past but make it a little more updated. We basically eliminated most of the sections and we just focused on the etiquette that people need to abide by when they’re on the network and we added a short values section that ties back directly to one of the statements in our recently updated code of conduct. We felt it was important to have those two documents reflect one another, and we eliminated the rules for the different membership groups because we really just felt like the same rules should apply to everyone regardless of whether you’re an institutional member or an affiliate member, and so the bottom line is we want people to be nice to each other and the URMIA network is a place for people to come and interact with one another but is not a place for people to come and post commercial messages and sell things, so I think that’s one of the unique things about URMIA is that we really want to help one another and we don’t have to worry about commercial messages and things like that. 

Jenny: Absolutely. As a long-time staff member that is a question we get from new affiliate members about our culture, and I always go back and really explain the evolution of URMIA, or probably URMIA’s first 30 years of existence we were institutional only, and then the board at that time was very wise and they value the relationships that the risk managers that the risk manager person had with their insurance broker, their underwriter, all the other people that they do business with, so they started allowing affiliate members to join URMIA and at that time they even, they valued the relationship so much that they put an affiliate member on our board. So that makes URMIA a very unique association, even out of the higher, other higher ed groups that I interact with having a for-profit member among the not-for-profit, the institutions makes us unique and it really shows, it shows me the value that that partnership really is. That our members work together in partnership to really protect their institutions. So, our culture is very unique. For those out there listening that might not be members of URMIA, we’re also unique in that we don’t have a trade show at our in person conferences, that, knock on wood, will be returning this fall. The value of URMIA members learning side by side, whether its a virtual environment or whether its in an in-person environment, our board, back when they allowed affiliate members to join the organization and be on the board, they really wanted to learn side by side and be in partnership, and that’s really, the rules have come full circle because we did carve those things out over time and I was part of the six page, I was probably part of that problem. Because you start with a document and then you add here, you tweak there, you add there, but I’m so happy with the result with this one page document that’s in modern language, it’s really easy to understand and I always like to shout out to the affiliate members, or even institutional members- if you are unsure about posting something online, reach out to the staff. We’re happy to help and we have Lou and Gary who are former risk managers who can give you an opinion. There are better ways sometimes to ask questions to get better responses, so we are always happy to help navigate that if anybody ever needs help. 

Julie: And I’ll just add to that even though the policy is the updated etiquette policy is out, we are still in the process, and I’ll be working with the URMIA staff to come up with an FAQ document that may address some of the questions that people have about what things they can and cannot post on the network. That will be coming, that’s TBD, but that will be coming soon to a computer near you so we’ll be sure to let you know when that’s ready. And I would like also to just thank the committee again for all their hard work, and to your point, Jenny, about the importance of affiliates, we really wanted to make sure that our affiliate members were comfortable with these updated rules because we do value their partnership very much and their input in this process was crucial and so we had three affiliate members on the rules and etiquette committee, so we had Amy Daley from FM Global, Jean Demchak from Marsh, Karen Kruppa from Suffolk University, Keesha Trim from the University of Richmond, Marje Lemmon from Yale and Chris Duble from Fred C. Church and we also had URMIA staff members Louise Schlesinger and Michelle Smith, and, Jenny, you did add a few comments here and there and also we do have to thank Ronna Papesh because she also had input into the document. So I feel like it’s turned out again much shorter, just seven bullet points about how you need to act on the network and they are things that are not difficult, they are just common sense things. And again, as with the code of conduct, the board of directors is responsible for reviewing this on a regular basis, so.

Jenny: Absolutely, and I know that there is one part that I’m still working on too, Julie, the protecting professional boundaries. We had a graphic that Praesidium helped us to develop and we’re still tweaking that and I’m hoping to actually get a graphic together that we can tie those three policies together, so when you’re looking at them they all reflect each other, that will come to in either phase two or phase three, so that’s still in the works.

Julie: This has been a multiphase process.

Jenny: And it took a village

Julie: It did take a village, it did take a village. It’s the pandemic, we don’t have anything else going on so, happy to help.

Jenny: Nothing, no snow storms, ice

Julie: No ice storms, no covid spikes on campus. We have it going on, so we were happy to do it. So, again thanks to all the folks who helped with that committee because we were able to get that knocked out in just a few weeks and everybody was great.

Jenny: Yeah, thanks to everybody that was part of that and members who are listening please check out those documents. They’re all online if you have any feedback, Julie and I, we’re available to take feedback, we’d love to hear from you. Well, thanks so much, Julie, you were an excellent co host/guest today.

Julie: You as well.

Jenny: Have an excellent afternoon and that’ll be a wrap on URMIAmatters.