2022 TeamTime Awards

From left to right: Chancellor Stefan Lorenz, Jule Feller, administration trainee, Jessica Skowron, AStA, Andreas Neu, Dean's Office for Spatial and Environmental Planning, Silke Wienands, lecturer in the Architecture department, Birgit Munz, Head of HAZ, Christina Palladino, HAZ administrator, President Professor Dr. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter, Dr.-Ing. Sandra Wolff, Chairwoman of the Staff Council Photo:Thomas Koziel

As part of the company suggestion program, both employees and students can submit suggestions for improving structures and processes at TUK. Five proposals that emerged from this program were honored in June at the first TeamTime Awards ceremony following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

From a total of 17 submitted proposals, the evaluation committee selected those that met the criteria for an award. During a ceremony attended by Chancellor Stefan Lorenz, Staff Council Chair Dr.-Ing. Sandra Wolff, Head of Central Services Birgit Munz, and TeamTime Coordinator Christina Palladino, President Prof. Dr. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter recognized the efforts to improve processes at TUK and presented the awards.

Jessica Skowron (AStA) was honored for her proposal to provide students with plots of land where they can independently tend small gardens. Skowron has already implemented this project on her own initiative, and it has been very well received by the student body. Currently, the small gardens are still located on rented land off campus, but university leadership has promised to explore whether such a space can be made available on campus.

Jule Feller, currently still an apprentice at TUK, impressed the committee with a plan to improve the onboarding process for apprentices. Drawing on her own experiences, Feller proposed specific changes, which she is now implementing in collaboration with the Human Resources department and the Talent Development team.

Both Stephanie Albrecht and Andreas Neu impressed the evaluation committee with their idea to introduce a reverse search function in the KIS. Although a reverse search is already possible via the Unified Communications System (UC), the committee commended their suggestion to further improve internal communication using the features available in KIS. For this reason, both Albrecht and Neu, like all award winners, received a meal voucher.

Silke Wienands and Peter Spitzley’s suggestion to optimize the display of allocations when checking account balances was also very well received by the evaluation committee. Since it was not immediately apparent from the journal entries what the allocations were intended for, this could only be determined through time-consuming research. Although this issue has since been resolved in MACH, the committee also recognized the value of the idea to expand and thereby improve TUK’s existing software systems.

In conclusion, both the President and the Chancellor praised the dedication of the award-winning employees and expressed the hope that they would continue to identify processes in need of improvement and submit them as TeamTime proposals.

TeamTime proposals can be submitted at any time, without a specific format or deadline, via the TeamTime Suggestion Form (uni-kl.de).

Likewise, all members and affiliates of TU Kaiserslautern can submit suggestions as part of the Workplace Health Management program in teams (not as individuals). The Occupational Health Management Special Award honors suggestions for improvement aimed at promoting health. These, too, can be submitted at any time via the link above, without any specific format or deadline.

 

Christina Palladino, HAZ Administrator

From left to right: Chancellor Stefan Lorenz, Jule Feller, administration trainee, Jessica Skowron, AStA, Andreas Neu, Dean's Office for Spatial and Environmental Planning, Silke Wienands, lecturer in the Architecture department, Birgit Munz, Head of HAZ, Christina Palladino, HAZ administrator, President Professor Dr. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter, Dr.-Ing. Sandra Wolff, Chairwoman of the Staff Council Photo:Thomas Koziel