Improving your Cardinal at Work experience

If you are faculty or staff at Stanford, chances are good you've been on this website more than once to learn more about benefits and compensation, university holidays, professional development, career guidance, workplace policies and processes, and more.

Cardinal at Work contains a lot of valuable news and information for you. And we are constantly looking for ways to improve it.

In late April, the website received a refresh, inspired by the results of user testing with hundreds of employees like you. With the help of user experience experts at Stanford Web Services, we hosted activities to understand how you think about this content.

The feedback highlighted where the site’s navigation could be more clear and direct and suggested the need for a new section: Well-Being.

In addition to adjusting the labels on the top navigation, we added more details to the top page of each section to help you find the content you visit most often on the site.

Summary of Changes to the Main Topic Areas

• “Well-Being”: The new home to information about BeWell, mental and emotional health support, financial assistance, caregiving resources, and more. Most of this content was previously under Benefits & Rewards.
• “Careers” (formerly "Learning at Stanford"): Be inspired to learn and grow in your current role and take steps to plan and search for your next one. This section includes our professional development course catalog, career guidance, recruiting, and hiring, as well as the refreshed Welcome Center site for new hires, and the Manager Toolkit. The “Search Jobs” link is also in this menu now. 
• “Workplace Essentials” (formerly "Working at Stanford"): Learn about our distributed workforce and flexible work arrangements, find details about addressing workplace concerns, and review Human Resources policies.
• “Community” (formerly "Engage"): Find updates on our diversity and inclusion efforts and the latest news and events for employees, as well as ideas for recognizing colleagues, photo galleries, our library of cultural celebrations backgrounds, and more.
• “Benefits & Rewards” (name unchanged): Find a comprehensive view of your benefits, compensation, and perks, with an updated Faculty & Staff Benefits Overview and Retiree Benefits Overview.

Supporting your well-being, purpose, and goals

While employee well-being has emerged as a hot topic across many industries since the pandemic, Stanford employees have long had access to programs that help them care for themselves and their loved ones, says Phyllis Stewart Pires, associate vice president in University HR for Employee Support Programs & Services. 

Each year, thousands of you rely on our BeWell employee wellness program, the Faculty Staff Help Center, and family support resources provided by the WorkLife office, among others. Information about those programs previously lived under Benefits & Rewards, making that section very long and dense. 

“We heard you — through this user testing, as well as other surveys, focus groups, and meetings with you over the past year. Access to these programs and services is valuable to you, and we want to be sure you can easily find them,” Phyllis says.  

In fact, connecting your needs to our benefits and employee programs is something you may notice more now across the website. “Well-being has a broad definition,” she explains. “When you are thriving in your role, on a team that values your contribution, have access to preventive care, have opportunities to volunteer and engage with the community … all of that contributes to your well-being. And we have programs to support all of that, to support all of you.”

Your perspective matters to us; thank you to everyone who joined the user testing. Send us your feedback.