Kansas City University Receives CUPA-HR’s HR Innovation Award

Kansas City University’s Department of Human Resources recently received the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) 2021 HR Innovation Award for its bi-monthly video newsletter.

The HR Innovation Award recognizes innovative thinking in higher education HR, especially models that can be adapted for use on other campuses. As part of the recognition, CUPA-HR contributed $5,000 to KCU’s COVID-19 Response Fund.

MyKCU Video News, developed in 2019 by Dessi Tomova, internal communications and engagement manager for KCU, is a bi-monthly digital newsletter that spotlights university topics such as upcoming events, trainings, benefits and wellness in the first half of the month and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the second half. The newsletter is distributed via the intranet and email to more than 300 employees across two campuses.

“The bottom line is that video is engaging, memorable and popular, so naturally we wanted to leverage the power of rich media to deliver something new and exciting to KCU employees,” said Tomova.

CUPA-HR is an association for HR professionals in higher education serving more than 33,000 HR professionals and other campus leaders at nearly 2,000 member institutions and organizations around the country.