Voting for the CSEA Everyday HERO award open now
Voting is now open for the annual Everyday HERO award given to civil service workers in New York state and will close May 25. The award is meant to recognize workers who have been honest, enthusiastic, reliable, and relatively ordinary.
Offered by the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), a New York labor union that represents state and local government employees, the award has been given to Geneseo employees as far back as 2012. Two employees are chosen every year, one operational service employee such as a janitor or facilities employee, and one administrative employee such as a secretary or librarian. According to the Geneseo website, recipients will receive an all-inclusive pass to Geneseo sporting events, recognition next to their parking spot, and a reception in recognition.
Administrative Assistant for the anthropology department Beverly Rex-Burley said that the award is a way to recognize the contributions of workers that a reliable and dedicated.
“We came up with this award to help promote our members way back in 2012. We just wanted to recognize the dependable person who is the unsung hero, or people that are reliable and come to work, who don't call off. They’re there to help students, they’re very helpful to the staff or the faculty, and we wanted to just give those people a little recognition,” Rex-Burley said.
Students can vote for one administrative and one operational employee on the Geneseo website.
Rex-Burley said that the award has not gotten as many votes as she had hoped, and that she encourages students to vote this year in order to recognize an employee that has had a positive impact on the college environment.
She said, “I think the last time I checked we had around 90 votes, but that’s for the whole campus. I mean, we have 4,500 to 5,000 students on campus, so I wanted to do it early to kind of catch the student votes. Just with our CSEA people, there's between 225 and 250 employees and faculty, so that’s not a lot of votes yet for the number of employees we have. We really wanted to get it going and do it in time for our next meeting so that we could kind of help out morale with all the workers and employees for the last bit of the year.”
Students are encouraged to vote for an employee that has been reliable and positive this year and has made a difference at Geneseo through their contributions to the workplace.
