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Happy Friday, HRD! Last week we talked about National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) and this week, we wanted to share some of the resources that are available to help build awareness and inclusion for individuals with disabilities:
Office Hours cancelled on Oct. 14 and Oct. 21: The next two sessions of Siobhain’s Office Hours will be cancelled while she’s out of the office. If you’re looking for support with specific applications, check out the Café Connect meetings (Fridays at 9 a.m.) or the MDH Study Hall (Tuesdays at 1 p.m.) that are hosted by the APP team.
What should our HRD SharePoint pages look like? We’d like to make our HRD SharePoint home page more useful for staff, and update it to use the Modern view that other MDH sites use. But we could use some help to understand what information would be useful to staff. If you have ideas for how we could make our pages better, please share them with your supervisor so that they can be passed on to the Senior Leadership Team; you can also leave them anonymously in the HRD Feedback Box.
2023 Open Enrollment is Oct. 27 – Nov. 16: This year, enrollment is open for medical, dental, vision, life, and long-term disability insurance, and pre-tax savings accounts. The State Employee Group Insurance Program (SEGIP) will be holding meetings to review options for employees, or you can call their Service Center (651-355-0100 (Metro) and 800-664-3597 (Greater MN)) for more information. Check the Intranet link above for more information and details about the meetings.
As referenced during our Strategic Planning initiative, MDH has initiated efforts to restore and rebuild our culture, and move toward both a Smart & Healthy Organization. The goal of this effort is to help improve morale by establishing partnerships, improving expectations and trust, and identifying tools and actions needed to help each other. MDH recognizes the stress of COVID is real, and has affected both the health of our staff, and the health of MDH as a whole. A focus will be made to ensure we are consistent using core values to drive our decisions and behaviors to ensure strong and strategic partnerships with our peers throughout the department.
MDH is interested in hearing from MDH employees regarding their thoughts on this topic and work. Over the next several weeks/months meeting invites will be sent out for opportunities to attend sessions regarding this work. Be on the look-out for an email from Margaret Kelly.
Lindsey Krueger is serving as HRD’s representative on the steering committee for this initiative.
This week we are spotlighting Sarah Grebenc! Sarah is our newest Federal Regional Operations Manager, overseeing our Bemidji, Fergus Falls, Marshall, and Duluth Evaluation teams.
Name / Pronouns / Position: Sarah Grebenc (she/her) / Regional Operations Manager, Federal Evaluation
Location: Metro Golden Rule Building
Tell us about your background. How long have you been in HRD? How did you get here?: I have been with the State for 13 years and 11 of those years have been with the Department of Health. I have a master’s in Social Work and my background is in long term care and critical access hospitals. When I stared with the Health Department, I worked out of the metro area and surveyed mainly nursing homes for compliance with State and Federal regulations. During that time, I moved into different roles that included supervisor and trainer. I did leave the Health Department for two years where I worked with the Office of Ombudsman for Long Term Care as a Policy Specialist and the Department of Corrections as a Medical Release Social Worker. My passion is long term care and I came back to the Health Department in 2018. I am trained to survey nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities and supervised living facilities.
What's your role within HRD? What do you work on?: I was recently promoted to a Regional Operations Manager (ROM) position and I will supervise the supervisors who oversee our evaluation teams that survey facilities for compliance. Some of my responsibilities will include respond to consumer questions to clarify the intent of the regulations, work with the supervisors to develop, coach and lead their teams and assist with the development and implementation of policies and processes within our department.
Describe a current project you're excited about, or an accomplishment you are proud of: I just started on my journey with the Emerging Leaders Institute and will spend the next seven months learning about leadership styles and leading within our State system. This will add to my role as a ROM professionally and help me grow personally.
What do you like to do when you aren't working?: I run just about every day to help clear my mind and be active. I live in Columbus (Forest Lake area) with my husband of 26 years and our dog and kitty. I love to be outside in my flower gardens and help out our neighbors. I believe in the work life balance and try every day to find that balance, some days I am more successful than others!
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In honor of NDEAM, here are 10 easy ways to practice accessibility that you can start doing today! Once you start doing these things, they become habits pretty easily. How many of these do you already do?
- Use black text on white background in documents and emails.
- Important because: people who are low-vision or colorblind may need high contrast in order to easily read text; colors and patterns in emails can make this more difficult for them.
Use a clear, easy to read font at a regular size (Calibri, 12 pt is preferred) in both your message text and your signature.
- Important because: people with visual impairments or neurological disorders may struggle to read busy or fancy fonts.
Use headings and styles to consistently format your documents (MDH templates are great for this).
- Important because: people with neurological impairments may have difficulty processing information that is not clearly structured.
Use clear, concise alt text to describe images, charts, and graphics.
- Important because: people who are blind/low-vision may be using a screen reader to view these items.
Use plain language – sentences should be clear, concise, and use words most people will readily understand.
- Important because: the average American reads at an 8th grade level; long, complicated sentences can be difficult to process for people who are using screen readers or who have neurological disorders.
Share agendas and documents before meetings.
- Important because: people with visual impairments may have difficulty reading a document through the screen share feature; people with neurological disorders may need more time to process information in order to be able to participate fully in the discussion.
State your name before you speak in meetings, especially when you aren’t on camera.
- Important because: people may be using captions or an ASL interpreter to participate in the call, or they may not be able to identify you only by your voice.
Speak clearly and at a regular pace and volume.
- Important because: people may be using captions or an ASL interpreter to participate in the call.
Raise your hand and wait for the meeting leader to recognize you.
- Important because: people may be using captions or an ASL interpreter to participate in the call; people may have difficulty following the conversation if more than one person speaks at a time.
Use the Accessibility Checker features in Office or Adobe programs before sharing documents.
- Important because: this provides an easy way to make sure your document is accessible before you share it. It’s just as important as spell-check!
One thing you may have noticed from reading through these is that they are pretty common-sense strategies for making sure that information and communications are clear for everyone, regardless of whether they have a disability. Clear communication helps us all do our work more effectively.
If you’d like to learn more about accessibility, the Office of Accessibility has self-paced trainings available to help you improve! You can also check out the Intranet page on Accessibility at MDH for resources or contact HRD’s Accessibility Coordinator, Siobhain Rivera.
This week, we have the following positions available, and more are coming soon. Please share them with anyone that you think would help make HRD a better place to work!
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Independent Informal Dispute Resolution (IIDR) Officer, Job ID: 59594: As part of HRD’s Reconsideration team, these two positions will represent HRD during dispute resolution hearings related to deficiencies found during the division’s surveys of federally-certified nursing and skilled nursing facilities. Closes October 17, 2022.
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Nursing Evaluator (Federal Operations), Job ID: 59463, 59461, 59420, 59421, 59383: These positions provide surveillance and evaluation of healthcare providers to confirm compliance with federal and state laws and rules related to the provision of nursing and health services. These postings will be used to fill positions based in the St. Cloud, Marshall, Rochester, St. Paul, and Duluth offices. Closes December 30, 2022.
These positions are open to internal and external candidates. If you would like to apply, please follow the steps below:
- Sign into Employee Self Service
- On My Homepage, click on Careers and enter the Job Opening ID in the Search Jobs box and click >> (Search).
- Click on the Job Title to view the job posting.
- Click Apply for This Job in the top right-hand corner.
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