Southern employees are now required to wear name tags as part of University President David Smith’s initiative to improve community service on campus.
“As part of prioritizing community service,” Smith said in a letter delivered to staff along with the name tags, “our goal is that every visitor to Southern can instantly identify someone who can help them. The tag gives each of us new opportunity to offer exceptional customer service to visitors, students and each other.” Smith also said that he hopes the name tags will help faculty and staff become more connected with each other by making them more recognizable to each other.
Another way this initiative attempts to connect Southern’s employees is by making all the name tags virtually the same with only two pieces of information: the university logo and the employee’s name. “When someone needs help, your position as a professor, office manager, electrician or vice president should have no bearing on whether or how you serve a customer,” Smith said.
This project began last year when consultants from Biltmore recommended name tags during employee customer service training. Smith, along with the marketing department, liked the idea and decided to apply it to Southern’s campus.
“[Once the idea was formed], it was mentioned at several town hall meetings, and they were on people’s desks by the beginning of the semester,” said Ingrid Skantz, vice president of marketing.
Alternate name tag options will be made available for jobs in which name tags would provide health and safety concerns. “Plant services is going to embroider their names [on their uniforms], and the Caf will have pins rather than a magnet to prevent nametags from falling off and contaminating food,” Skantz said.
Students had mixed reactions to the nametags. “It’s very beneficial for students to be able to identify professors, even in a non-classroom sense,” said Carolyna Depkin, sophomore liberal arts education major.
Gabriela Martinez, senior psychology major, had a less positive view. “I thought it was kind of tacky because students should just be able to ask their names, and they should know the names of their professors. It’s more like what I’ve seen in restaurants and nursing homes; it just seems weird to me in this setting.”
Still other students felt like the change made little difference at all. “It didn’t have a negative impact,” said Brooke Lynn Bridges, senior English major, “but it didn’t have a positive one either. I felt the teachers were already accessible, [and] I feel like in general we are a pretty welcoming place.”