Title: Change Management Senior Analyst, ITS Enterprise Applications
Time with ITS: 4.5 years
Personal: Anita was an Air Force brat who lived in Holland and Germany as a kid before settling in Fayetteville, Tenn. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband, Wes, their two kids, Will and Cassie, and two poodle mixes, Bonnie and Thunder.
What is your job?
For a major change, I figure out who the change affects, exactly how their job will change and then I make sure that they have the information and the skills that they need to make the transition. I try to make it as smooth as possible. And then I also keep track of their transition.
What excites you about your work?
My favorite thing is I get to interact with a lot of people across campus. For example, for Connect Carolina we have what we call training and implementation partners—people who are nominated from all the units across campus, plus on the finance side we have campus trainers. That group is about 110 people. I interact with them individually and as a group fairly often. It’s so much fun for me to learn what they do and to go meet them in their various buildings. I get to see how different they are, the very different things that they do. Sometimes I get lucky and get to have a tour of a lab or a different facility. I love interacting with them and learning what they do. That’s just a treat for me.
What’s been the biggest challenge to get everyone ready for go-live on October 1?
There are plenty of challenges to choose from. One of the real challenges at UNC, I think, is that we’re very decentralized. So lots of separate units that each do things very differently. You really can’t take a top-down approach. You have to go try as much as you can to meet with each group individually and try to give then what they need.
What is key to helping users get comfortable with the new Connect Carolina HR/Payroll system?
I think the key to making each person’s transition successful is if they feel a sense of ownership and a sense that they can own their change instead of feeling that it is foisted upon them. I don’t think it’s the only key and I don’t think it’s the magic bullet, but that has been our goal – not just mine, but the project team’s goal – to try get people engaged and give them the opportunity to see things early and give feedback early. I do think it makes a difference.
ConnectCarolina is how a lot of people know you and may be the extent of what they know. What would people be surprised to learn about you?
I am such an open book that if you talk to me for five minutes you know my entire life story probably. I’m a very hands-on person. For example, I am learning how to do upholstery. I make homemade soap and I throw pottery and I love to garden and start seedlings from seed. Anything that requires hands-on, I’m going to like it, especially if I get to figure it out myself. Also, my husband and I renovated a house in Atlanta. We did a lot of the work ourselves – for better or worse.”