Volume 1, Number 5 · December 1995/January 1996

Volume 1, Number 5 · December 1995/January 1996

IMAGINATION REAPS CVC HARVEST · VIRGINIA PORT AUTHORITY . . . POWERING THE PORTS · STATED BRIEFLY · Past Issues

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

On behalf of Susan and the Allen Family, we extend to you and yours our warmest wishes for a joyful and safe holiday season.

As we look back on the first half of our Administration, I am so very grateful for your dedicated hard work and service to the Commonwealth.

By working together, we have accomplished a great deal in 1995 for the people of Virginia. Please know that your dedication to serving our State is appreciated. This year has been punctuated by a number of successes and positive changes in welfare reform, improving public safety, and creating new and better jobs for Virginians. Your assistance in carrying out these and other reforms to our State government is also appreciated.

Your continued commitment and dedication to excellence as the best work force in the nation will take us to new heights in the years ahead. Let's continue our quest to improve the quality of life for all Virginians. Thank you for your continued commitment.

We wish you and your family a happy and healthy holiday season!

IMAGINATION REAPS CVC HARVEST

With the 1995 Combined Virginia Campaign all but drawn to a close, stories are floating in about the hundreds of state agency-based efforts used to garner support this year. Among the more inventive and successful of these was the creative use of food to reach the hearts of state employees working at the Virginia Industries for the Blind (VIB). There, the CVC's campaign theme, "Harvesting Hope," took on a literal and tangible context.

It began as a motivational idea in the mind of James Baskerville, a VIB driver who co-coordinated his agency's CVC effort, and quickly grew to a challenge to his 50 co-workers: "Give through the CVC, and I will provide each of you with a home-cooked lunch." Before making the challenge, of course, Baskerville used his talent for persuasion to enlist the help of his wife, Lillian, who would assist him in making good on an open-ended promise to feed a small army, if necessary. Well, it quickly became necessary. Whether food truly is the quickest way to a person's heart and, in this case his or her pocket, or whether more employees at VIB are especially attuned to the need to help those less fortunate, is immaterial. The appeal worked tremendously well. Fully 98 percent of the VIB's work force in Richmond met Baskerville's challenge. So it was that under an autumn sky at the conclusion of the VIB's CVC campaign, Baskerville stood over a deep fryer which spewed the appetizing aroma of fried lake trout into the air, stoking the noontime appetites of CVC donors. Mrs. Baskerville rounded out the menu with fried chicken, vegetables, beverages and a dessert of German chocolate cake.

"I didn't suggest how much they should give or who they should give to. The most important thing was that they made a commitment to help others. If it weren't for concerned people, many of us wouldn't have a job or be able to give something back to our community," Baskerville explained.

Like so many who prefer to toil quietly behind the scenes to improve the quality of someone's life, Baskerville would have been just another "unsung hero" had his effort not been noticed and appreciated by Mary Anne Isbell. As the human resources director for the Health and Human Services secretariat office, Isbell served as the secretariat's overall CVC coordinator. She quickly noticed that early reports of giving at VIB far surpassed comparable agency reports from VIB at the same time last year. Her curiousity peaked, Isbell sought to find out why this was occurring and found Baskerville's challenge at the center of it.

Baskerville's selflessness typifies, overall, the generosity of the state's work force contributors to the CVC. Through good times and bad, their largess has been demonstrated annually at this time for the past nine years, making Virginia's one of the top public-sector charitable drives in the nation. The voluntary charitable donation program has proven to be a convenient and appealing method in support of the more than 1,000 health and humanitarian organizations which participate in the CVC.

While final numbers for the campaign will be available in March, preliminary figures reveal that state employees already have pledged more than $2.2 million through the CVC for the 1995 campaign. The majority of CVC regional campaigns throughout the state reported their expectation of continued receipt of donations through December 31, the last official day of the statewide campaign season.

"Given the significant reduction in the size of the state's work force, we couldn't be more pleased with the result of this year's campaign, as reported in these preliminary figures," said Ivan Tolbert, public affairs manager for the Department of Personnel and Training and the statewide coordinator of the CVC. "We implemented a number of improvements to the campaign process this year, making it easier to use the CVC for supporting agencies throughout the state and redoubling our effort to reach all state employees. No doubt, these efforts have contributed to the state work force's ability to, once again, provide an equal, or maybe even a better, level of support to charities here in our home state and throughout the nation and world," Tolbert added.

Included in improvements is the new Combined Virginia Campaign 1995 Directory of Participating Charities. "Many people have ties to other areas of the state. By giving people the choices they want, participation in the campaign is bound to increase," said Florence Morris, an adviser to the Virginia Retirement System, who was in attendance at the VIB luncheon to represent VRS Director Bill Leighty. Leighty is the volunteer chairman of the Richmond region's CVC. "The new directory is a winning opportunity for everyone," she concluded.

Preliminary Results Reported by Region

Capital Region $1,115,518

Central Shenandoah Valley $35,820

Central Virginia $41,000

Colonial Area $102,377

Galax Area $176, 730

Halifax/Danville Area $134

Lower Shenandoah Valley $48, 631

New River Region $192,560

Northern Virginia $30,805

Peninsula Area $22,966

Rappahannock Rapidan/Northern Neck $1,626

Southwest Virginia $249

Thomas Jefferson Area $228, 000

South Hampton Roads $185, 072

Upper Shenandoah Valley $53, 788

Washington County Area $6,982

Preliminary Total $2,242,258

VIRGINIA PORT AUTHORITY . . . POWERING THE PORTS

The truck stops here. For that matter, so do the trains and the ships too. When it comes to moving goods of all kinds in and out of Virginia, no one does it better than the Virginia Port Authority. And unless you make a habit of hanging around shipping docks, the enormity of the job performed by the Port Authority has probably not attracted your attention. Yet behind practically every purchase you make, from automobiles to toaster ovens, looms the massive capability to get things moving _ off of huge transports and into your living room, kitchen or garage.

While wandering the aisles of your favorite department store, you've probably never given a second thought to how your favorite items reached the store shelves. Sure you've seen the busy stock clerks filling vacant shelf space as rapidly as it appears, but the deeper you delve into the merchandising "food chain" the more you'll learn to appreciate the state workers who toil, day-in and day-out, to guarantee that your every demand for consumer products is met. The next time you bite into a chocolate bar, sip a cup of hot cocoa or pop a Hershey's Kiss into your mouth, think of the Port Authority. As the nation's largest importer of cocoa beans, odds are good that the journey from the cocoa field to your palate included a stopover at the Virginia ports.

Many of us do not realize VPA as one of the world's finest ports, and too many of us probably misunderstand the important role state employees have played in its incredible record of success.

For nearly 400 years, Virginia has played a unique role as America's connection to the world. From the early founding of the Jamestown trading colony, in 1607, as the first port in America, through the eras of the great clipper ships and the modern sophistication of computerized shipping, Virginia has been at the forefront of every major change in the global transportation industry. From the beginning, Virginia's natural advantages have attracted the attention of the shipping world. Virginia has, far and away, the best natural deep-water, ice-free harbor on the U.S. East Coast. Another element of Virginia's success is her fortuitous geography. Situated in the middle of the country's East Coast, the ports are within a day's drive of two-thirds of the U.S. population and many major manufacturing centers.

The Port of Virginia is a vast and bustling complex consisting of three separate marine terminals located at Norfolk, Newport News, and Portsmouth, as well as the Virginia Inland Port in Warren County. The marine terminals are located alongshore historic Hampton Roads, only 18 deep-channel miles from the ocean, near the base of the Chesapeake Bay.

Many factors have contributed to the Port's phenomenal growth. However, none has been as important as unification. In 1982, the Virginia General Assembly passed landmark legislation designed to unify the ports in Hampton Roads harbor under the operation of a single agency, the Virginia Port Authority (VPA). The Port of Virginia facilities were purchased by the Commonwealth and, since then, have been under the direction of the VPA and its operating company the non-stock, non-profit Virginia International Terminals, Inc. In the years preceding unification, the ports, which were privately operated by competing companies, were characterized by sporadic, unsustained growth and splintered marketing efforts which often resulted in intra-port competition. Unification has made the Port of Virginia the fastest growing port complex in the United States. During the past 13 years, the Port of Virginia has emerged as one of the world's leading gateways for maritime commerce. Improvements to Port facilities, coupled with expanded services and new marketing strategies, resulted in unparalleled growth. General cargo traffic has increased by more than 300 percent in that time.

Another factor in the success of the Ports has been the move in the shipping industry to containerized cargo. As the term implies, such cargo is carried in containers that can be easily conveyed to, and transported by, a variety of transport methods; mainly ships, trains or trucks. The intensive coordination with Virginia-based Norfolk Southern and CSX rail lines, the development of 30 miles of on-site rail tracks and an ever-increasing move in the industry to containerization has positioned the Virginia ports favorably, with the capability of promising train deliveries to 50 percent of the U.S. population within 48 hours. In 1989, an effort to capitalize on this trend led to the creation of the Virginia Inland Port at Front Royal, VA. This intermodal transfer facility provides a link between truck and rail for transporting ocean-going containers to and from The Port of Virginia.

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And just who are the state employees that make all of this happen, and what part do they play in this continuing success story? The Virginia Port Authority is headquartered in Virginia's World Trade Center, located in Norfolk. The agency comprises 122 full-time employees, 72 of whom are port police officers. Other jobs entail management and marketing responsibilities. Most American ports are not state owned and operated. They lack the cohesion and coordination that results from the kind of centralized oversight that has given the VPA its strong competitive edge. Ports in Louisiana, Florida, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Puerto Rico have attempted to model their own development strategies after the VPA's.

VPA's worldwide network

Personal relationships and commitments are time-honored, standard business practices in the shipping industry. A good deal of the success at the Virginia Ports has been widely credited to the visionary leadership of J. Robert Bray, VPA's director. Since the inception of VPA, his personal involvement and commitment have been key to the Port's success. The commitment to make Virginia number one, and keep her at the top of the industry, is embraced by VPA employees around the world. With offices in New York, Chicago, Brazil, Brussels, Japan, Singapore and Korea, the marketing effort of VPA spans the planet. Representatives here work hand-in-hand with their co-workers overseas to facilitate the movement of massive quantities of goods in and out of Virginia's ports. The intimacy of VPA's customer service approach to marketing is summed up by Linda Ford, director of port promotions: "If we're not serving the customer directly, we make sure we serve the people who are."

In a recent interview, John Covaney, senior managing director of marketing services, stressed the importance of the people factor, "A crane is a crane, and a berth is a berth. In the end, the difference is people, and we have the best!" The marketing division is synergistic; everything domestic has an international arm and everything international has a domestic arm. Covaney provided an example of how the marketing team works by describing a recent deal that involved both domestic and foreign marketing activities. The VPA's representative in Covington, Kentucky, while pursuing additional business from an import company operating from China, saw a promising opportunity to expand VPA's existing contract with this company, which was shipping goods within her territory in Columbus, Ohio. She contacted the VPA office in Hong Kong, which conducted research to learn what types of cargo were being shipped, in what volumes, and by which ocean carriers. She determined that the company's needs could best be met by an expanded relationship with VPA. After compiling the data and fleshing out the opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic, she joined the Chinese corporate representatives in Norfolk for a meeting with VPA's executive director, the VIT terminal operator, VPA's legal counsel and a Norfolk city representative. Following this meeting, the Port's facilities were toured. As a result, a new distribution plan that will increase volume from 500 to 600 containers per year, which will flow through the Norfolk port, is on its way to reality. "It's this type of involvement in customer service that makes the difference; taking care of their business needs as well as our own," Covaney said. "Virginia always has had the great location. The real difference has been our people" he added.

The success and expansion of the Ports has resulted in over 116,000 private-sector jobs within the ports industry. The day-to-day, hands-on work is done by members of the International Longshoremen's Union. Virginia has gained from excellent labor relations, resulting in 15 years of continuous operations with no locally based strikes. Employees know that when the Port of Virginia works, everyone benefits. The Ports have had an enormous impact on Virginia's economy. Port-related business alone contributes $2.9 billion in wages and $319 million in taxes each year. Because of its leadership role in the import/export industry, the Ports also play a large part in convincing multinational industries to establish plants in Virginia.

Complacency is nowhere to be found along Virginia's waterfront. As business continues to grow, Port leaders are aggressively planning for the future. An ambitious $400 million, 10-year expansion project is under way at Norfolk International Terminals (NIT). When completed, the four-phase project will make NIT the largest intermodal cargo facility on the U.S. East Coast. Volume is projected to double by the year 2010.

The story of Virginia's ports is, in large measure, an account of Virginia's historical commitment to its success. The Ports have benefited from the extraordinary support of Virginia's government leaders and the superior management and marketing efforts of dedicated state employees. We can be proud of our co-workers at VPA, as well as their 13 consistent years of robust growth and accomplishment, achieved in behalf of all Virginians.

Some VPA Quick Facts:

Leading Export Commodities

Pulp, waste paper & paperboard
Logs, lumber & plywood
Unmanufactured tobacco
Manufactured tobacco
Plastics
Alcoholic beverages
Nitrogen-function compounds
Motor vehicle parts & accessories
Texture yarn
Poultry; fresh, frozen, chilled
Leading Import Commodities
Cocoa beans
Unmanufactured tobacco
Motor vehicle parts & accessories
Alcoholic beverages
Paper & paperboard
Plywood & veneer
Natural rubber
Engines & parts
Inorganic chemical elements
Iron & steel, flat-rolled
Total Cargo Moving Through Virginia Ports Generates:
116,158 port or port-related jobs
$2.9 billion in wages/earnings for workers
$319 million in state and local taxes

STATED BRIEFLY

Governor Allen has authorized additional holiday leave time for all state employees, except those deemed essential for the operation of critical agency functions, as determined by your agency head. State offices will officially close at noon on Friday, December 22 and remain closed on Monday and Tuesday, December 25 and 26. Offices will be closed on New Year's Day. One additional day off may be taken during the last week in December or on Tuesday, January 2. At their discretion, agency heads may or may not choose to coordinate which days off may be taken by which employees, as needs dictate. These additional days of holiday leave will not be charged against regular leave balances. Agencies with 24-hour operations will continue to be guided throughout this period by standard Department of Personnel and Training policies governing holiday leave.

The Department of Personnel and Training is in the process of reviewing the state's Policies and Procedures Manual. Containing such policies as compensation, hours of work, leave procedures and standards of conduct, this manual will be reviewed in an effort to make policies more accessible and available to management and employees. A task force of DPT employees, representing various areas of program expertise, will undertake this review. As part of its mission, the task force will work to create policies with greater flexibility of interpretation and adaptability. This revision will better accommodate the unique environments and management needs of individual agencies. The policy review will be ongoing for the next four to six months. Focus groups will be used to solicit input from line agencies. Suggestions from human resource staffs and state employees are welcome and encouraged. Send written suggestions to the DPT Office of Compensation Management.

The article "Special Health Benefits Open Enrollment scheduled this fall," printed in the October/November issue of the Commonwealth Currents, reported that the standard Key Advantage Plan has been expanded to include coverage for Prostrate Specific Antigen (PSA) screening, coverage for immunizations beyond age 6, or a vision benefit. Instead, only those employees who elect the Expanded Benefits under Key Advantage will have coverage for the aforementioned benefits, provided they meet the age/eligibility requirements.

1995 braille subscriptions expire with the December/January issue of the Commonwealth Currents. To either renew or place a subscription, call Ivan Tolbert, at (804) 225-2181.

The editor invites employees to submit brief items that would be of interest to state employees. While we will make every effort to print those items, placement cannot be guaranteed because of space limitations. Send submissions to: Editor, Commonwealth Currents, Department of Personnel and Training, 13th Floor, 101 North 14th Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219.

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ALERT

The Department of General Service's Division of Purchase and Supply recently has received numerous reports of activity by telephone scam artists. These calls typically target human resources, marketing or fiscal personnel and involve the selling of advertising in minority-oriented publications. If you are contacted by someone you don't know who attempts to sell you mail order products or advertising, notify your purchasing office immediately to determine if the call is legitimate. If you discover that you have been the victim of a telephone scam, please contact DPS Compliance Officer Gary Johnson, at (804) 786-1602, for advice in handling this situation.

TRAINING

Take charge of your future through state government training. Continuous learning is your responsibility and essential to your future.

Rgister today for these classes...

JANUARY

The Re-Engineering Process January 10-11 Cost: $165

Career Transition Management January 18 Cost: $60

Managing Change: Skills for Survival and Success in Today's Changing Workplace January 24 Cost: $85

Fundamentals of EEO Law January 25 Cost: $25

Benchmarking January 26 Cost: $95

FEBRUARY

Telephone Techniques for Enhancing Customer Service February 2 Cost: $35

Alternative Pay Strategies February 6 Cost: $60

Fundamentals for Benefits Administrators February 12 Cost: $35

Sexual Harassment: What Managers and Supervisors Need to Know February 15 Cost: $25

Advanced Benefits Administration February 26 Cost: $35

Essentials for Supervisors February 13-15 Cost: $90

Delivering Quality Customer Service February 27 Cost: $70

Strategic Team Building February 28-29 Cost: $105

MARCH

H R Generalist Culture Change March 5-6, 12-13, 19-20 Cost: $175

Process Action Team Training March 5-6 Cost: $155

Introduction to Project Management March 12 Cost: $65

Understanding Strategic Planning March 13-14 Cost: $90

Managing Ourselves and Others Through Change March 26 Cost: $70

Introduction to Personnel Management Information System (PMIS) March 26 Cost: $25

The Americans with Disabilities Act: The Law and Its Implications March 28 Cost: $25

Individuals...

Enroll in competency based training programs scheduled quarterly for all state employees.

Managers and supervisors...

Bring training on your issues, to your location, on your time schedule with just a phone call _ no RFP's, no contract negotiations_ simply by calling the DPT training center.

Here's a description of just one of the valuable courses offered . . .

Managing Ourselves and Others Through Change.

Examine major life and organizational changes and their impact on productivity. Participants will practice change management strategies designed to foster wellness, minimize operating and emotional disruptions, and help people become change owners and stakeholders.

FOR MORE INFORMATION See the DPT Training Programs First Quarter 1996 Catalog, available in your human resource or training office, or call the DPT training center at (804) 225-2157.

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COMMONWEALTH CURRENTS

Published for Commonwealth of Virginia employees by the Department of Personnel and Training

Volume 1, Number 5

December 1995/January 1996

Charles E. James, Sr.,Director, Department of Personnel and Training

Ivan Tolbert, Executive Editor

Mike Cody, Graphic Designer

Commonwealth of Virginia