HR Excellence: Positions Human Resources as a strategic partner to all campus units. Achieving excellence ensures the university attracts and retains highly qualified and diverse faculty, staff, and administrators committed to the institution’s mission and values. HR Excellence fosters a culture of innovation, transparency, and continuous improvement and growth. Currently in progress are several specific initiatives, such as Performance Management and the Total Rewards, are in progress.
Last quarter, this initiative accomplished the following:
- Performance Management
- Met with campus stakeholders to learn about performance management efforts and gather feedback on proposed evaluation forms.
- Hosted training sessions for employees to assist supervisors and employees in understanding the management cycle and goal-setting process.
- Total Rewards Study
- Conducted a comprehensive study of Rice's total rewards package.
- Collected data through campus stakeholder interviews and analyzed internal HR data, including employee benefits, compensation, and job structures.
Next quarter, this initiative will:
- Performance Management
- Set performance goals for the 2024 fiscal year by supervisors and employees.
- Total Rewards Study
- Communicate the timeline and initial updates regarding staff compensation and employee benefit programs to the campus community.
- Collaborate with leaders across campus to review and update job architecture, including job families, subfamilies, and job classifications.
- Partner with the budget office to develop a multi-year funding plan to support any necessary changes to staff compensation and employee benefits programs.
- Initiate Phase 2 of the project, focusing on implementing the plan, which may include changes to benefits, compensation, and job structures.
Budget and Finance Excellence: Finance and Budget Excellence serves as the overarching framework encompassing a range of initiatives designed to enhance resource allocation in line with the university’s mission, deliver exceptional budget and financial services to the campus community, and foster innovation. Currently in progress are several specific initiatives, such as the Budget Transformation Initiative, Research Administration Roles and Responsibility Assessment, Long-Term Planning and Governance, and Procurement Process Improvement.
Last quarter, this initiative accomplished the following:
- Budget Transformation:
- Determined initial design parameters, created the overall governance structure for the project, and established clearly defined project goals and guiding principles.
- Established Steering Committee and Design Committee.
- Engaged campus through presentations and updates through various channels, including the Admin Forum, Faculty Senate, the project website, and F&A Fast Five.
- Hosted four interactive engagement sessions for the campus community with over 150 participants.
- Conducted 35 interviews with more than 50 stakeholders from across campus.
- Examined over 200 budget-related documents to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of Rice’s budget model.
- Established an 18-month timeline.
- Procure to Pay/Strategic Sourcing
- Completed Phase 1.
- Hosted stakeholder sessions to review procurement processes, practices, policies, and procedures.
- Identified pain points, system enhancements, policy improvements, and process improvements to provide better service, build trust, and more fully meet the campus needs around procurement.
In the next quarter, this initiative will:
- Budget Transformation, Phase II
- Build an actuals model.
- Determine the organizational structure of the budget model.
- Review decision points with governance groups.
- Customize the budget model, and continue campus engagement activities.
- Research Administration Roles and Responsibility Assessment
- Evaluate the current state of research administration to understand the challenges faced and identify areas of opportunity, including organizational realignment, resourcing, and skills and knowledge gaps.
- Design the future state research administration model that clarifies roles and responsibilities across the organization, supports efficient grants administration, and enable growth to meet the university’s ambitious research growth goals.
- Long-Term Planning and Governance
- Assemble a working group of campus stakeholders to the Capital Working Group. The purpose of this group is to help develop a proposal for Capital Governance for Rice, which will provide a transparent process for campus constituents to request campus investment in specific capital development and renewal.
- Convene the initial capital working group during the summer and assign tasks of pulling together the governance charter and establishing the new process for capital projects.
- Procure to Pay/Strategic Sourcing
- Implement the recommendations of the campus working group and continue the feedback and communication process.
- Begin strategic sourcing in late fall.
Real Estate and Capital Excellence: This initiative will maximize the efficiency of the university’s capital investments by prioritizing effective project management and execution, conducting comprehensive risk assessments, and fostering active involvement from the community. Through these measures, F&A commits to ensuring that each capital investment delivers the highest possible benefits for the university and its stakeholders.
Last quarter, this initiative accomplished the following:
- Conducted comprehensive meetings with key stakeholders to evaluate and identify areas for improvement.
- Collaborated closely with Project Management staff to evaluate project management processes, with a specific emphasis on enhancing efficiency.
- Received approval to proceed with major capital projects, including the construction of Colleges 12 and 13, the development of BRC and O'Connor labs, the commencement of Phase 1 renovations to the R-Room, and upgrades to restrooms at the football stadium.
Next quarter, this initiative will:
- Initiate implementing recommended measures to enhance project management practices, facilitating a more streamlined and efficient approach.
Sustainability: The Sustainability Initiative will adopt a comprehensive approach to establish a more sustainable campus. It will prioritize the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and devise and execute a roadmap to attain our carbon-neutral objectives by 2030.
Last quarter, this initiative accomplished the following:
- Created the Office of Sustainability within Campus Services and Sustainability.
- Reorganized the Administrative Center for Sustainability and Energy Management under the Office of Sustainability.
- Partnered with Green City Recycler to launch a move-out collection campaign where unwanted items (e.g., clothes and appliances) were donated by Rice students. As a result, approximately 5,000 lbs. of durable goods were kept out of the landfill.
- Collaborated with campus departments, student interns, and Moonshot Compost to collect 169,544 lbs. of food waste which was then composted.
- Installed 14 additional water submeters on campus, totaling 73, as a part of the university water leak detection program. These meters have identified 20 major water leaks, saving approximately 10.8 million gallons of water, equivalent to about $157,000.
- Initiated a year-long water master-planning process between the Office of Sustainability and Facilities, Engineering, and Planning to pinpoint water conservation and reuse prospects, predict future campus water demand, and establish efficiency goals.
- Neared completion of Phase One of Rice University's Climate Action Plan with input from over forty stakeholders, including faculty, staff, students, and alumni. This plan will guide the university toward its carbon neutrality goal by 2030.
- Collaborated closely with campus and community partners to curtail energy throughout the summer months. This activity lessens electrical consumption and reduces the possibility of electricity brownouts in Houston.
Next quarter, this initiative will:
- Create a sustainability roadmap.
- Expand the sustainability team.
- Raise awareness of the UN SDGs.
- Begin working with F&A departments to address UN SDGs.
IT Excellence: With the recent reorg of the Office of Information Technology, F&A has expanded the previous iO Evolution effort to be more inclusive of the strategic project work unfolding within OIT. IT Excellence is focused on enhancing the IT user experience by optimizing service delivery and execution for the Rice community. Currently in progress are several specific initiatives, such as the iO evolution and the Enterprise Data Warehouse.
Last quarter, this initiative accomplished the following:
- iO Evolution:
- Launched SPFF Dashboard in early June.
- Facilitated P2P Dashboard Improvements training.
- Implemented operational governance structure with design committee partnerships.
- Consolidated iO Evolution/imagineOne websites featuring a more intuitive and user-friendly structure to be launched the first week of July 2023.
- Enhanced the internal and external career sites for a more user-friendly experience.
- Enterprise Data Warehouse
- Kicked off the initiative by meeting with various governance groups.
- Onboarded consulting partner.
- Developed project plan and program roadmap.
In the next quarter, this initiative will:
- iO Evolution:
- Address the Graduate Student Appointments and Pay Review.
- Review enhancements to the labor distribution process to increase efficiency.
- Enhance the supplier registration user experience.
- Enterprise Data Warehouse
- Begin building the data warehouse and data lake.
Enterprise and Risk Management: This initiative takes a holistic approach to assessing enterprise risk. Finance and Administration will be critical in effectively mitigating the university’s enterprise risk. F&A is working closely with the Office of Ethics, Compliance, and Enterprise Risk to ensure a partnership in correcting these enterprise risks.
Last quarter, this initiative completed the following:
- Interviewed 76 University management representatives.
- Identified enterprise risks, mitigation activities, and internal controls.
- Considered the reputational impact of all risks alongside all categories of risk.
- Facilitated discussions with the Executive Compliance Committee regarding the results of the meetings.
- Reviewed and approved the risk profile.
- Received approval of the Top Enterprise Risks by the Board of Trustees Audit Committee.
In the next quarter, the initiative will:
- Present the full report on each enterprise risk to the Audit Committee, inclusive of mitigation strategies and metrics.
- Facilitate partnership between Finance and Administration and the Office of Ethics, Compliance, and Enterprise Risk to mitigate, monitor and report on progress and assessment of enterprise risks.
|
|