UCalgary embarks on international benchmarking study of administrative and support services

UCalgary is embarking on a multi-university, multi-year benchmarking study of administrative and support services in support of our continuous focus on improvement.

The study will help UCalgary understand where we need to invest to meet current challenges and secure future opportunities. The study has two parts. The first is a service effectiveness review where faculty and professional staff across the university will be randomly selected to participate in two 15-minute surveys which collect data on employee satisfaction across 65 administrative and support services such as finance, IT, and human resources. The second part of the study is a data collection focusing on the time invested across the same 65 administrative and support services. 

“We will continue to focus on streamlining and creating greater efficiencies to deliver high-quality services to the university community,” says Linda Dalgetty, vice-president (finance and services). “Our community consists of highly skilled and dedicated faculty and staff and we want to ensure to advance programs and services to support them and their work.”

Several Canadian post-secondary institutions, including the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, McMaster University and York University also participate in the benchmarking study. The data collection is supported by Cubane Consulting through their UniForum benchmarking program. UniForum was designed with and for research-intensive universities and is utilized by universities in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Overall, the goal of the program is to help universities:

• Understand the efficiency and effectiveness of their support services
• Identify opportunities to improve the underlying, end-to-end processes
• Understand where investments may be required

If you have any questions about the program, please contact the UCalgary UniForum team at uniforum@ucalgary.ca.