Shared Services:

“Our first five years were like flying the plane, redesigning the plane, changing the plane, and then repeating again”. By adopting a ‘progress over perfection’ and pilot approach to new ideas and continuous improvement, we have created a space for co-creation with our community leading to manageable changes to improve service and increased adoption rates over our first five years.” Ria Ames, AVP, Shared Services

Create Shared Services unit and new home at Enterprise Square

Established in 2021, Shared Services was tasked with creating the unit and managing the immediate transition of HR, finance, distribution, and IT teams from across the university, while concurrently building internal unit infrastructure. Beyond hiring and training staff, the unit immediately began optimizing hundreds of processes. Simultaneously, the team designed a new workspace at Enterprise Square, establishing the protocols necessary to foster a safe, healthy, and inclusive return-to-office environment.

Open the Staff Service Centre

With a six week timeline, the Staff Service Centre opened on July 26, 2021 with six new Shared Service Advisors. Known as the “front door” for the Shared Services unit, these subject matter experts provided information/advice and triaged service requests. Opening meant onboarding, training and implementing a new service management tool. The IT Service Desk would join early in 2022 on a different system. Both teams would not be on the same system until 2023.

Robust onboarding and service training

Service excellence in Shared Services begins with a robust 30-day onboarding program that integrates new hires into the unit while preparing them for their specific roles. This process ensures all mandatory university training is completed and grounds each individual in our key principles: our Common Approach to Working Together, Defining Our Why, Huddle Best Practices, data handling and security, workplace safety, and the importance of our operating model.

Communication and feedback channel development

Communication and feedback are central to our success. Beyond developing channels like our website and the Shared Services Monthly Operational Newsletter to disseminate information, we prioritize gathering just-in-time feedback to drive rapid improvements. We started with quarterly surveys and feedback forms to actively shape our operational strategy and inform our future initiatives.

Modernize through standardization

In early 2022, we established our Service Innovation team to drive the continuous improvement initiatives identified daily. Our initial focus was automating offer letters through the Alfresco Workflow/Consigno process, which significantly reduced turnaround times from hiring to HCM entry, thereby accelerating onboarding and system access. The team subsequently achieved several key milestones, including digitizing 1,400 boxes of employee records, implementing the new FreshService university portal, retiring over 30 central inboxes, and upgrading the ERP. Additionally, we streamlined operations by introducing e-transfers, automating independent contractor invoicing in Supplynet, and successfully transitioning recruitment and timekeeping activities into the unit.

Defining our why

Defining our Why, was the foundation to how we would approach continuing to build out Shared Services. It was an operational strategy to ground the entire team in what we do and how we do it. Defining our pillars of Excellence, Transformation, Value and Partner helped us to define the work we would do and the outcomes we needed to achieve. As this was the year we would come back in person and really get to know one another, this was an important milestone in building our service culture through our “power of connection”.

Automation and process standardization

This year, the implementation of Convera, Groupize, and PayMyTuition automated payments, creating a more seamless experience for both staff and students. Specifically, PayMyTuition offered international students a secure payment method while eliminating manual back-office entry. This would be extended to all domestic students in the upcoming year. Additionally, the new casual bulk upload tool significantly improved onboarding for faculties with high-volume hiring by reducing turnaround times. Building on efficiencies identified the previous year, we also streamlined processes for graduate student appointments.

Learning sessions and materials

Starting in 2023, we launched our first General Administrative Bootcamp. Approximately 150 staff were in attendance to learn about different HR, finance and IST processes. At the same time, we launched Core Services Guides for HR and finance processes to be used as a one stop solution for finding information.

Automation and process standardization

We introduced artificial intelligence through our chatbot, IVY, which has facilitated over 93,000 community discussions with an 87% vendor-ranked confidence rating. To enhance accessibility and operational flexibility, we also upgraded our call center with a new phone system and all teams with softphones. Operational efficiency further improved through several key projects, including a new package tracking system, updated webpages, streamlined wire transfers, new mass load functionality, and the integration of the Janeapp, PTools upgrades, and Continuing Education finance processes. Finally, we launched a Recruitment Pilot that expanded our service offerings, enabling us to provide end-to-end recruitment support for support staff, APO, and excluded personnel.

Enhanced recruitment services and Oracle Recruitment Cloud implementation

Building off a successful pilot, the Talent Acquisition team was expanded to support enhanced end to end recruitment for our hiring managers. The implementation of Oracle Recruitment Cloud provided a more seamless experience from posting to offer letter, which allowed for a more positive experience for both the hiring manager and candidate.