Progress

Completed Efforts
Human Resources

Establish Talent Attraction Efforts

IHR formed a committee of stakeholders that conducted Big Ten research, hosted several employee focus groups, and created multiple surveys for potential employees. Accomplishments are bulleted below:

  • IHR created pride points for employee recruitment messaging and communications. An updated jobs.illinois.edu website was created and launched campus wide
  • A LinkedIn “Life” page was established as a part of the university LinkedIn account with over 500,000 followers
  • A partnership with the Illinois Professional Campaign was established through 16 employee spotlight videos, 41 podcasts for the recipients of our CDSA and CAPE awards, and 14 Digital Digests that spotlighted employees across that campus throughout the pandemic.

Improve University of Illinois Onboarding Services

Illinois Human Resources (IHR) has developed “Illinois Orientation for New Employees (I-ONE),” currently offered on the first Monday of each month for new hires to the Illinois campus. The content for this program was developed with broad campus input from the Training and Employee Development and Advisory Committee (TEDAC).

As a part of enhancing onboarding for our employees, we encourage everyone interested in onboarding resources to visit the Onboarding for New Employees webpage. The page has resources for new hires and colleges/units that will assist new employees during their first year of employment.

Create Opportunities through Collaboration with System Human Resource Services

Key reform priorities have been identified in collaboration with System and HR leaders of other campuses. These priorities include the Residency Requirement, Rule of Three, Extra Help Extensions, Grant Funded Appointments, and Testing.

Define an HR Service Catalog

The HR Functional Design team has defined the parameters and purpose of the HR Service Catalog. An internal catalog is complete in draft form and the team is currently discussing governance, publishing, and the platform for the implementation of the catalog going forward.

Marketing and Communications

Consolidate Common Resources and Develop Tools to Add to a University-Wide Repository

The Office of Public Affairs (which will transition to the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing during the Spring 2023 semester) has built the first set of training modules for communications/marketing professionals across the institution. The modules provide basic guidance on areas such as video production, planning events, working with the media, and conducting market research. The modules also provide contact information for subject matter experts on campus who can answer specific questions, as well as a feedback form for each module to solicit ideas for growing and strengthening the information and support provided on the site.

Information Technology

Define an IT Service Catalog

The IT Functional Design team has defined the parameters and purpose of the IT Service Catalog. The team is currently discussing refining and publishing the catalog, including the platform to be used going forward.

In-Progress Efforts
Human Resources

Develop Centers of Expertise within IHR

Centers of Expertise (COE’s) are part of the new “Reimagined IHR” organizational model. New service commitments for the Centers of Expertise and all of IHR have been developed, distributed, and are a guiding component of IHR’s organizational change. More information will be provided once the Centers of Expertise are operationalized, staffed, and readied to support the campus.

Human Resources – Service Delivery Design

The HR FDT is partnering with Huron to craft the details of the future state of Illinois HR support and management. The team:

  • Outlines function specific resources and services, setting the expectations and procedures for services
  • Aligns existing talent to redesigned roles, while mitigating challenges for impacted employees
  • Addresses dependencies and sequencing to ensure a holistic and flexible implementation across functions
Information Technology

IT – Service Delivery Design Planning

IT Operational Excellence is currently focused on planning efforts in support of three priorities for 2023 – establishing an IT ESMO, finalizing the enterprise-wide IT service catalog, and identifying and implementing prototypes for select service delivery models (see below for additional details). IT leaders are developing proposals for operationalizing each priority, as well as clearly defining the value that each will bring to the campus community. Simultaneously, efforts are currently underway to establish project teams that will advance the work to achieve these priorities under the guidance of an in-development IT Operational Excellence Steering Committee.

  • Finalize the IT Service Catalog: Advance the service catalog from its complete draft form that supports strategic decision-making to full, technical implementation (e.g., back-end infrastructure, front-end portal)
  • Establish an IT ESMO: Stand up IT Enterprise Service Management that establishes campus-wide IT service management frameworks and owns service catalog implementation and maintenance
  • Identify Prototype Models and Launch Prototype(s): Define prototype models for improved service delivery, identify prototypes that could demonstrate model value/feasibility, and implement prioritized prototype(s)
Marketing and Communications

Marketing and CommunicationsDevelop MarCom Center of Expertise, establish/review MarCom governance

During the Spring 2023 semester, Public Affairs is changing its name to the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing to reflect the new Centers of Expertise structure and approach. Public Affairs is working with the Strategic Project Management Office (SPMO) to build an approach and support systems and processes to conduct enterprise-wide annual planning for communications and marketing activities for the university, colleges, and units. In 2023, MarCom will be partnering with Huron to continue Op. Excellence efforts and design details of the future state of Illinois Marketing & Communications support and management.

Future Efforts

Additional Operational Excellence initiatives related to the following areas do not have a defined start time at this date. Each functional area and the Advisory Governance Chair are listed below:

Budget

  • Vicky Gress, Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Budget and Resource Planning

Data

  • Amy Edwards, Associate Provost and Director of the Division of Management Information

Procurement

  • Bradley Henson, Director of Purchasing

Space

  • Paul Redman, Associate Provost for Capital Planning