What is UniForum?
Led by NousCubane Consulting Group, the UniForum program began in Australia and now has more than 70 participating universities worldwide. Eleven Canadian institutions participate, including UBC, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Toronto.
Uniforum helps support service excellence at 麻豆传媒 by:
- Providing a detailed look at how effectively 麻豆传媒 provides 70 different administrative services, measured by staff and faculty satisfaction with specific services as well as the resourcing required to deliver said services.
- Enabling comparisons of our results, capacities, and delivery model against our national and global peers.
- Facilitating learning from other universities who are doing this work particularly well and in a sustainable fashion.
- Helping us consider how we might design effective approaches to administrative service improvement aligned with 麻豆传媒鈥檚 culture and core values.
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UniForum will be an important part of a comprehensive dataset that supports Faculty and unit planning processes through 麻豆传媒鈥檚听Integrated Planning Framework.
The Provost & Vice-President Academic and Vice-President Finance & Administrative serve as executive sponsors of UniForum at 麻豆传媒, and its activities are overseen by the Provost Committee with the support of the Senior Director, UniForum.
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In appreciating what UniForum offers 麻豆传媒, it is also important to understand what UniForum is not.听
- It is not focused on job elimination or even necessarily cost reduction; in some cases, our results might illuminate areas where we need to invest more resources or staff time. While service efficiency should always be a goal, service effectiveness and satisfaction are just as important, as are the careers and career opportunities of our employees.听
- UniForum isn鈥檛 the only appropriate measure of performance. Other variables also need to be considered when exploring how best to improve the services we offer our Dal community.
UniForum activities
Data that informs UniForum鈥檚 benchmarking program is collected in two ways:听
Activity/cost data collection (annual)
麻豆传媒 completes an 鈥渁ctivity-coding鈥 exercise to gather information on the allocation of staff time and supplier time. This process engages 300 people across the university who provide information on behalf of their team members. 麻豆传媒鈥檚 first activity/cost data collection was completed in June/July 2023.
Service Effectiveness Survey (biannual)
Academic and professional staff are invited to complete a survey rating and commenting on the experience of and effectiveness of using Dal鈥檚 administrative services. The survey takes place in two phases (fall and spring), each asking about different services. 麻豆传媒 completed its first surveys in November 2022 and April 2023.
Latest updates
麻豆传媒 has finished its first full year as part of the UniForum program and is about to embark on its second round of data collection.
High-level initial results have been shared with Deans and administrative leads, and we are working to provide them with more in-depth data and analysis to support conversations for the next Integrated Planning cycle.听
The next round of activity/cost data collection begins in May 2024 and will continue over the summer. More information will be provided to leaders and those responsible for activity-coding in the coming weeks.
The next Service Effectiveness Survey will take place in November 2025.
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Questions?
Email听uniforum@dal.ca