A message from Vivek Goel, President and Vice-Chancellor.
An important component of our three-year plan to move towards financial sustainability is an effort to reduce duplication and improve efficiency of our administrative services. To support this effort, we have begun a process of reviewing campus-wide administrative functional areas, with reviews of our communications and marketing, finance, and IT functions.
Looking ahead, there are additional administrative functions that we believe will benefit from review to help us become more efficient and strategic. Updates on future functional reviews will be provided as areas are selected.
Reports on the first three functional reviews have now been received and University leaders shared details with the employees in each functional area this morning. The reports, which we are sharing with the University community now, include an analysis of the current state of operations, how Waterloo’s organizational structures and expenditures in these areas compare to other universities in Canada, and proposed recommendations on how to become more efficient and cost-effective.
Read the functional review report
To help us in this work we partnered with Nous Group, an international consultancy firm that has worked with top institutions around the world and in Canada.
The reviews took an end-to-end University-wide view of the three functions, so the reports should not be read as an assessment of the performance of central administrative service units. The key findings of the three reviews include that:
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Across all three functions, there is too much focus on delivering transactional activities and there is more opportunity to focus resources on strategic and advisory activities to support the health of each function institution-wide.
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Duplication of service delivery between units is prevalent and coordination across the institution could be improved. Over the course of multiple decades, faculties and ASUs have built teams, processes and technologies to meet local needs – often in the absence of an institutional strategy to drive collaboration and coordination. As a result, we have myriad systems and often low standardization of processes.
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To achieve our “One Waterloo” aspirations, we need to work on building trust across the University. We need to build a shared vision of service excellence and user-centricity to align the University community on how administrative service teams support each other and the academic mission.
The results of this analysis reflect the feedback from those who were consulted by Nous and are the outcomes of decades of decision making, influenced by social, economic, and political factors that affected the University over the years. Although the results show we spend comparatively more on administrative functions than our peers, some of this may reflect our unique differentiators as an institution. Further analysis on this important finding will be conducted.
We think differently, act with purpose, and work together — these are the values that resonate across our institution because they are the values we were founded upon. When you review the report, think about the results through this lens. We’ve experienced rapid growth because of rapid success, and with that growth has come some areas for improvement that were highlighted in the report.
While financial motivations have driven this work, it is important that we keep in mind that the directions highlighted are consistent with what we have heard through the Waterloo at 100 consultations and the Provost’s Advisory Committee on a Resilient University of Waterloo. Ultimately this work will lead to better services for our students, employees, and community.
Moving forward to realize opportunities for improvement
I want to be clear that this report contains recommendations proposed by the external consultants. We must reflect on and decide how to move forward. To help us with that, we have created functional review implementation teams that will be co-led by Vice-Presidents and Deans, reflecting the importance of shared accountability for these functions across faculties and ASUs:
- Information Technology James W. E. Rush/Tom Duever and Mary Wells
- Finance Jacinda Reitsma and Alexie Tcheuyap
- Communications and Marketing Nenone Donaldson and Bruce Frayne
Membership of each functional review implementation team will be finalized soon with representation from each function’s central administrative service unit, faculties and other ASUs. These teams will be small so we can get to considerations of what actions to take quickly, but they will have a mandate to collaborate with leaders, managers and employees across the institution over the summer to develop an action plan that supports achievement of our academic mission and strategic objectives while improving efficiency and financial stability.
As these internal teams help us to think differently about new opportunities, I want to acknowledge that change will include some level of reorganization of teams and roles as we seek to reduce duplication and improve efficiency. We will continue to find ways to limit the impact on individuals by leveraging natural attrition to avoid involuntary job losses where possible over the next few years. These will be difficult decisions that the functional review implementation teams will work through with care for people who will be affected.
We will continue to work through these and further reviews over the coming years relying on data – such as that from the UniForum benchmarking surveys that are underway now – and consultation to achieve the best for our students and our academic mission.
Thank you to all who have participated in the functional reviews and for your continued efforts in helping the University return to a balanced budget.