Enhanced Planning Tools Measures for Administrative and Support
Services Units
Quality
Annual service plan
Does your area prepare an annual service plan? If yes, please attach.
Benchmarks and measurements of quality
How do you assess the quality of the services and programs in your areas? Do you have any
goals or benchmarks against which you are measuring quality? How does your area determine
whether the service provided is meeting the needs of users?
User feedback process
Describe your unit’s standardized, informal or formal feedback process, (i.e. satisfaction survey
or other assessment instrument) to determine if the services are meeting the needs of users.
Provide your unit’s key findings from your most recent assessment.
Training programs
Describe any training programs both formal and informal that your unit provides (i.e. new
procedures, processes, equipment, software applications)? How do you measure the quality
of training provided?
Employee qualifications and skills
Do employees in your area have the appropriate level of qualifications and/or skills for the roles
they are fulfilling? Is there an appropriate mix of qualifications/skills for the services you
provide? If no, what are the gaps and how should the gaps be addressed?
Employee satisfaction and feedback
How do you gauge employee satisfaction within your unit? How do you receive feedback from
your employees?
Performance management and professional development
Are performance management practices utilized in your unit? Do you have professional
development plans in place for your staff? What % of staff participates in professional
development activities?
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Demand
Services provided
Describe the range of services provided to internal and external users: (external users include
alumni, donors, outside agencies, etc.; internal users include students, employees, other units,
etc.).
Demand factors
Describe the factors affecting demand within your unit. Examples may include:
a) # of contacts, clients, constituents or transactions processed
b) University policy
c) Volume of goods and services sold
d) External regulatory and public policy requirements (health or fire regulations, for
example), legal commitments or agreements with external partners (contracts, MOUs,
outreach efforts, corporate partnerships, etc.)
e) Reporting requirements to external agencies (research contracts with external funding
agencies, provincial, federal or local governments)
f) Environmental factors (demographic, local, regional)
Changes in demand
What changes in demand (growth rate) has your unit experienced in the past 3 years and what
changes do you anticipate in the next 3 years? Please describe.
Gaps in essential services
Based on best practices at other universities or institutions, are there gaps in the range and
scope of essential services offered by your unit compared to services offered at other
institutions?
Space constraints
Is your unit experiencing issues with increasing programs or services due to the lack of
available space?
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Productivity and Efficiency
Productivity and Efficiency Measures
What productivity and efficiency measures have you identified for services and how are they
measured? Units should consider both quantitative measures (as indicated below) and
qualitative approaches including reorganizations, consolidations, etc.
Effectiveness ratio: Actual number of clients (faculty, staff, or students, etc.) served:
desired number of clients served based on unit goals or targets
Efficiency ratio: actual clients served: actual operating costs (average cost to produce
accounts payable cheque; budget office FTEs compared to university operating budget,
etc.)
Productivity: # of documents or clients served within a specified time frame (# of
cheques issued in a year, # of student applications processed, etc.)
Efficiency review process
Has your unit undergone an efficiency review process (such as an internal audit, peer review
etc.) within the last 3 years? If so, what were the results? If not, would your unit benefit from
such a review?
Benchmarking measures
What benchmarking measures (industry/national standards, Key Performance Indicators,
performance targets, comparisons with other universities or institutions, or other metrics) is
your unit able to provide to assess the productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of services
provided? What are the results of your analysis and what does it tell you about your
operations? If your unit does not currently have a benchmarking process, provide and report
results based on comparisons with a similar unit at 4 or 5 other universities.
For revenue generating units or those holding inventory items for resale or distribution
(ancillary, science stores, facilities management, etc.) the following are examples of
possible metrics:
a) Inventory Turnover=total revenue/inventory
b) Gross margin=cost of goods sold/revenue
c) Labor costs as a percent of revenue=labor costs/revenue
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Continuous improvement plan
Do you have a plan for maintaining or improving the productivity, efficiency and effectiveness
of services offered by your unit (streamlining or initiating new processes, innovative changes,
process/unit reviews, etc.)?
What do you hope to achieve (reduce unit operating costs, improve processes and program
productivity)?
(Ways to improve efficiency might include simplification, removing bottlenecks, eliminating
shadow systems, and/or removing redundant processes.)
Process and procedure documentation
Does your unit have well defined and documented processes, procedures, governance
documents and/or learning outcomes? If not, identify key risks (staff turnover, incorrect or
inefficient processing by staff or clients etc.)
Impact and Contribution
Alignment with university strategic plan
Briefly describe the top 3-5 ways your unit’s programs and services: Align with the university’s
mission, strategic initiatives, integrated plans and goals; and make use of the UVic Edge
components.
Differentiation
How does your unit help the university differentiate itself from other institutions?
Contributions to community
What benefits, or contributions, does your unit offer to communities?
Support of equal rights and dignity
List the ways your unit supports the strategic plan value statement of equal rights and dignity
for all persons (policy link
http://www.uvic.ca/universitysecretary/assets/docs/policies/GV0200_1105_.pdf )
Relationship to other units
What is the relationship of your unit to the success of other units?
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Context and Opportunity Analysis
Unique features
Are there unique features of your unit or important contexts for the work of your unit that are
not captured in the questions and data above? If so, please explain.
Unique opportunities
What unique opportunities is your unit planning to pursue over the next five years?
Financial Considerations
Year-end financial overview
In reviewing your year-end position, describe the main factors that led to your financial result
(surplus or deficit).
a. Does this result lead you to consider making any operational or resource allocation
changes?
b. Are you using general operating carry forward or specific purpose funds to cover ongoing operational costs?
Note: If this information is documented in your year-end carry forward template (Detailed
Planned Usage for Categories), please attach.
Future cost planning
What equipment replacement strategies do you have to ensure the timely replacement of
critical research, instructional and office equipment?
a. Have you prepared an analysis of future replacement costs to support these
strategies?
b. Have you allocated sufficient budget to the the equipment reserve to cover these
costs?
Endowment award planning
For those units receiving endowment income, are your endowments being fully utilized and
are these funds being used to address unit priorities? If not, have you engaged with the
Development Office to determine if the terms could be broadened or whether some priority
area in your unit would fit within the current terms?
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Potential salary risks
The following questions are intended to ensure units and leaders are aware of salary
commitments that may result in a financial risk to your unit.
a) Do you have salaries that are funded by sources other than base budget? If so, for how
long is the current funding available and do you have operational plans for when the
funding ends to either address the loss of personnel or the costs associated with the
end of employment (vacation pay, overtime, severance if applicable, etc.)?
b) Do you have employees who work considerable amounts of overtime, year after year,
resulting in accumulations of CTO or OT balances or costs? If so, are these costs base
budgeted or are you using other sources of funding to pay these costs? Do you have
plans to minimize or eliminate these costs?
Financial considerations feedback
What other financial information or data would be useful for you when planning and making
resource allocation decisions? Please provide suggestions for improving the financial data
within the Enhanced Planning Tool.
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