Cornell University Division of Planning and Budget

• Workforce Planning Overview
• Objectives
• Process
• Functions Reviewed
• Accomplishments
• Key Principles Learned
• Resulting Actions

Workforce Planning Functions Reviewed

The major functional areas initially identified for review included human resources, financial management, alumni affairs and development, facilities, information technology, and student services. Reviews in human resources, finance, and alumni affairs and development began in January and February 2002 while the reviews in facilities, information technology, and student services began in October 2002. The list of reviews was expanded with the addition of a review of library and related information services in March 2003 and a review of the procurement function beginning in July 2003.

The links below will provice a summary of each review including the original charge, major decisions made, and a listing of the the lead team members.

• Human Resources
• Finance
• Alumni Affairs and Development
• Facilities
• Information Technology
• Student Services
• Library and Related Information Services
• Procurement

Human Resources

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The human resources workforce planning review is focused on examining the assignment of responsibilities and commitment of resources related to human resource support functions on the Ithaca campus. Specific objectives for this review include:

1. Gather baseline data to document the current general assignment of responsibilities, organizational structure and staffing plan, and the amount of resources in terms of dollars and staff FTE’s devoted to human resource functions on campus.
2. Define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within an organizational structure that most effectively and efficiently achieves university human resources objectives and ensures compliance with university standards and external regulations.
3. Develop a proposed staffing plan that achieves the financial savings goal for the human resources function established by the Workforce Planning Team. The savings goal is established based on a review of the current distribution of work and use of resources and consideration of alternative scenarios to optimize effectiveness and efficiency.
4. Develop a measurable standard for evaluating the quality of service delivery and procedures for regular evaluation.

Major Decisions Made

Consolidate human resource management and transaction processing support at the college/unit level to improve transaction practices and policy interpretation and implementation. Large units will have on-site human resource management and transaction processing support. Small units will receive this support through a shared service center operation.

The Vice President for Human Resources has been given explicit responsibility, oversight, and accountability over the resources needed to provide human resource support to all Ithaca campus operating units.

Reduce human resources staff by 24 FTE’s campus-wide. We estimate there are currently 202 FTE’s committed to human resources management and transaction processing, excluding staff with less than 25% effort in related activities.

Consolidate general training resources to support staff training and development campus-wide.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the human resources workforce planning review include:

Mary Opperman, Vice President of Human Resources, Team Chair

David Butler, Dean, School of Hotel Administration

Rich McDaniel, Associate Vice President, Campus and Business Services

Dick Shafer, Associate Dean for Corporate Relations, Johnson Graduate School of Management

Pat Wright, Professor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Division of Planning and Budget

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Finance

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The finance workforce planning review is focused on examining the assignment of responsibilities and commitment of resources for financial transaction processing on the Ithaca campus. Specific objectives for this review include:

1. Gather baseline data to document the current general assignment of responsibilities, organizational structure and staffing plan, and the amount of resources in terms of dollars and staff FTE’s devoted to financial transaction processing on campus.
2. Define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within an organizational structure that most effectively and efficiently achieves university financial processing objectives and ensures compliance with university standards and external regulations.
3. Develop a proposed staffing plan that achieves the financial savings goal for the financial transaction processing established by the Workforce Planning Team. The savings goal is established based on a review of the current distribution of work and use of resources and consideration of alternative scenarios to optimize effectiveness and efficiency.
4. Develop a measurable standard for evaluating the quality of service delivery and procedures for regular evaluation.

Major Decisions Made

Consolidate financial transaction processing at the college/unit level to improve transaction practices and policy interpretation and implementation. Large units will have on-site financial transaction processing support managed at the unit level. Small units will receive this support through a shared service center operation.

Staffing levels for financial transaction related activities will be established by the Vice President for Financial Affairs and University Controller. Financial processing staff located not a part of a shared service center will remain under the budgetary control of the local operating unit, however any significant increase or decrease in the amount of resources allocated to this function over time will require the approval from the Vice President for Financial Affairs and University Controller before any action is taken.

Clarify roles and responsibilities:
- Senior Administrators in college/units will have responsibility for financial transactions and compliance for college/unit.
- Department business administrators will have accountability to the Senior Administrator in their college/unit for financial management.

Reduce staff doing transaction processing by 46 FTEs. At the time, we estimated there were currently 355 FTE’s committed to transaction processing.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the finance workforce planning review include:

Joanne DeStefano, Vice President for Financial Affairs & University Controller, Team Chair

Bill Crepet, Professor and Department Chair, Plant Biology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Marge Ferguson, Associate Dean Business Administration, School of Hotel Administration

John McClain, Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Management

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Division of Planning and Budget

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Alumni Affairs and Development

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The focus of the alumni affairs and development workforce planning review

Major Decisions Made

Staffing Responsibilities will be reconfigured to expand the carrying capacity of senior individual giving officers.

Processes related to gift acknowledgement, gift processing, and broad-based dues programs will be streamlined.

The infrastructure and technical services operations in the central division will be extended to support stewardship activities in the contract colleges and designated schools.

The Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development will have primary oversight responsibility for development activities at the college level.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

The Workforce Planning Team is serving as the steering committee for this review. External consulting support will be used to provide relevant benchmark data and analysis as considered necessary.

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Facilities

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The purpose of the workforce planning effort is to provide resources to accomplish our academic program priorities and to ensure a long-term balanced operating budget. The facilities function impacts the operating budget significantly through personnel and non-personnel costs associated with on-going facility related activities such as building care and maintenance, but also through capital project expenditures. As such, the workforce planning review includes components focused on campus-wide activities that support on-going facility operations, capital project costs, and other centrally managed facility functions.

Specific objectives for this review include:

1. Gather baseline data to document the current general assignment of responsibilities, organizational structure and staffing plan, and the amount of resources in terms of dollars and staff FTE’s for all activities under the Division of Facility Services, Campus Life Facilities, and all on-campus unit facilities functions/staff.
2. Develop an understanding regarding basic organizational structure, funding mechanisms, and operating framework for facilities functions in comparable institutions and benchmark against Cornell.
3. Define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within an organizational structure that most effectively and efficiently achieves university facilities related objectives and ensures compliance with university standards and external regulations.
4. Develop a proposed staffing plan that achieves the financial savings goal for the facilities related activities established by the Workforce Planning Team. The savings goal is established based on a review of the current distribution of work and use of resources and consideration of alternative scenarios to optimize effectiveness and efficiency.
5. Develop a measurable standard for evaluating the quality of service delivery and procedures for regular evaluation.
6. Conduct an external review of capital project costs for both large (greater than $500,000) and small capital projects.
7. Establish a plan to conduct an external review in other major centrally managed facility functions (e.g. environmental health and safety, environmental compliance).

Major Decisions Made

Roles and responsibilities between unit based and central facilities staff have been clarified.

Operating practices will be improved and streamlined to improve ease of access to facilities service providers available both internally and externally and to provide greater transparency on major project management issues including project costs.

The volume of capital expenditures on certain goods and services will be leveraged through new purchasing practices to achieve financial savings.

Capital planning processes will be strengthened.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the facilities workforce planning review include:

Hal Craft, Vice President for Administration & Chief Financial Officer, Team Chair

John Alexander, CEO CBORD Group, Trustee

Edna Dugan, Assistant Vice President, Div. of Student and Academic Services

Jerome Hass, Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Management

Bill Sims, Professor, Department of Design & Environmental Analysis

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Div. of Planning and Budget

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Information Technology

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The purpose of the workforce planning effort is to provide resources to accomplish our academic program priorities and to ensure a long-term balanced operating budget. The IT function impacts the operating budget significantly through personnel and non-personnel costs associated with on-going IT activities. As such, the workforce planning review includes a component focused on general campus communication and computing support and centrally managed information technology support functions.

Specific objectives for this review include:

• Gather baseline data to document the current general assignment of responsibilities, organizational structure and staffing plan, and the amount of resources in terms of dollars and staff FTE’s devoted to information technology functions on the Ithaca campus. Vestibulum ut elit eu massa malesuada tempus.
• Examine and define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within an organizational structure that eliminates unnecessary or duplicative effort, achieves integrated and coordinated support where appropriate across campus units, and results in the most effective and efficient delivery of information technology support to the campus.
• Develop a proposed staffing plan that achieves the financial savings goal for the information technology related activities established by the Workforce Planning Team. The savings goal is established based on a review of the current distribution of work and use of resources and consideration of alternative scenarios to optimize effectiveness and efficiency.
• Develop a measurable standard for evaluating the quality of service delivery and procedures for regular evaluation.
• Conduct an external review of the costs (in terms of dollars and time) related to administrative system implementation and maintenance with the objective of evaluating the reasonableness of the costs and identifying recommendations for improved effectiveness and efficiency. Benchmarking costs and relevant practices against appropriate peer institutions and/or for-profit corporations is appropriate.
• Establish a plan for reviewing the effectiveness and efficiency related to supporting, maintaining and upgrading telecommunications systems and campus-wide technology infrastructure. Such review(s) would be conducted in fiscal 04-05.

Major Decisions Made

Primary roles and responsibilities for major IT support activities have been clarified with the expectation that this will enable a more cost effective and efficient system for local end-users and the university as a whole.

A number of efficiency and service enhancement recommendations for adoption by each operating unit and supported by CIT have been approved. Significant cost savings are possible if the recommendations are fully implemented.

Appropriate actions will be taken to address the major findings from an external review of administrative computing. These actions are varied in nature, but are expected to improve administrative system development processes.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the information technology workforce planning review include:

Polley McClure, Vice President for Information Technology, Team Chair

Bill Arms, Professor, Computer Science

Charlie Fay, Assoc. Provost for Research Administration

Fred Schneider, Professor, Computer Science, FABIT member

Joe Thomas, Assoc. Dean, JGSM

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Div. Planning and Budget

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Student Services

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The student services workforce planning review is focused on examining the assignment of responsibilities and commitment of resources related to student services support functions on the Ithaca campus as well as reviewing major Campus Life operations. Specific objectives for this review include:

• Gather baseline data to define and document current roles, responsibilities and accountabilities, organizational structure and staffing plan, and amount of resources in terms of dollars and staff FTE’s devoted to student services functions. These functions include advising, admissions, career services, financial aid, and registrar for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.
• Examine and define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within an organizational structure that most effectively and efficiently achieves university student service objectives and ensures compliance with university standards and external regulations.
• Develop a proposed staffing plan that achieves the financial savings goal for student services support activities established by the Workforce Planning Team. The savings goal is established based on a review of the current distribution of work and use of resources and consideration of alternative scenarios to optimize effectiveness and efficiency.
• Develop a measurable standard for evaluating the quality of service delivery and procedures for regular evaluation.
• Conduct an external review of Dining Operations. A focus of this review should include evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of operations and identifying potential cost-saving strategies. (Note: An external review of Community Development operations will be conducted in fiscal 03-04.)

Major Decisions Made

• Career Services: The University Career Services Office will reorganize into four primary service units to better serve students and employers. Efforts will continue to establish a university-wide employment services center that will coordinate and integrate responsibilities between the central university office and unit staff. Common best practices have been identified, and coordinated planning and implementation efforts are in progress. The career services function campuswide experienced a 12% reduction in staffing (approximately 6 FTE’s) since the beginning of workforce planning. These reductions came primarily as a result of budget constraints; however, workforce planning efforts to establish improved efficiencies enabled the staffing lost to occur without significant reduction of services.
• Admissions: No fundamental change was made in the relationship and distribution of responsibilities between central university and unit-based admissions staff. Recommendations from the admissions review support the establishment of a coordinated recruitment plan and development of a document imaging system.
• Cornell Dining and Community Development: External reviews were completed in Cornell Dining and Community Development (i.e. housing). Cornell Dining has experienced cost reductions as a result of their workforce planning efforts. A comparison of labor costs in 2001 versus labor costs in 2004 indicates that savings of $500,000 have been realized.
• Registrar: The review of the registrar function has been closely linked to the implementation of a new student records system. The clear definition of roles and responsibilities and improvement in business practices is expected as a result of this effort once the work is completed.
• Student Financial Processes (i.e. Bursar and Financial Aid): The review of student financial processes in the Bursar and Financial Aid functions will be completed as part of the implementation of new student systems.

Lead Team Members

Members of the Steering Committee for the student services workforce planning review include:

Susan Murphy, Vice President for Student and Academic Services , Team Chair

Glenn Altschuler, Dean, School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions

Doris Davis, Associate Provost for Admissions & Enrollment

Kent Fuchs, Dean, College of Engineering

Alison Power, Dean, Graduate School

Robert Smith, Assoc. Dean, School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Division of Planning and Budget

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Library and Related Information Services

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The purpose of the university workforce planning effort is to provide resources to accomplish the university's academic program priorities and to ensure a long-term balanced operating budget. The university invests substantially in acquiring, organizing, storing, preserving, and disseminating information in many forms, in providing functional workplaces on campus for learning and study incorporating this information, and in the support of a cultural repository, with a major portion of its investment in these areas devoted to library and information services. In the 21st century, the Information Age, access to information for the creation of new knowledge is a critical enabling element for scholars and students, so it is reasonable to devote significant funds to information access, management, and preservation.

In the Library, the primary categories of expenditures are personnel, library materials acquisition and access, information technology, and facilities. Meeting the future resource requirements to fund acquisitions at the level expected by students and faculty and to provide appropriate access, both physical and electronic, to library material will require reallocation of existing resources. The intent of this review is to ensure that the university's resources are used in the most effective and efficient way to meet the information access, management and preservation priorities of the university.

Specific objectives of this review include:

• Clearly define knowledge management roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities within the Cornell University Library and other related operations at the University,
• Identify the structures and methods that will result in the most effective and efficient delivery of library services for the library and university as a whole in terms of both operating cost and space; and
• Achieve significant savings in the library system and in associated library services (e.g. digital repositories) on the Ithaca campus (includes Geneva Agricultural Experimental Station) to help support the university's academic priorities.

Major Decisions Made

Two primary recommendations were approved from this effort. One recommendation called for reducing the amount of unnecessary duplicative materials purchased among all the libraries. The second recommendation was for the integration of technical service operations.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the library workforce planning review include:

Sarah Thomas, University Librarian

Patsy Brannon, Dean, College of Human Ecology

Dan Huttenlocher, Professor, Computer Science and JGSM

Eric Nelson, Associate Professor, Plant Pathology

Scott MacDonald, Professor, Philosophy

John Sebastian, Graduate Student, Medieval Studies

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Division of Planning and Budget

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Procurement

Excerpt from Original Review Charge

The procurement workforce planning review will have two major components. One component will consist of a strategic sourcing review seeking to realize $5 million in annual financial savings of non-personnel expenditures on the Ithaca campus. The second component will consist of a review of procurement roles, responsibilities, policies and practices. Specific objectives for this review include:

• Conduct a strategic sourcing review to identify and realize significant cost savings in non-personnel expenditures. Implement policies and/or practices necessary to ensure cost savings can be sustained into the future.
• Review all relevant procurement policies and practices with the objective of eliminating low value added activities and enhancing value where appropriate. Clearly define related roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.
• Review current purchasing authority limits and the delegation of this authority on the Ithaca campus. Define the delegation of authority which results in the most effective and efficient purchasing function.
• Identify potential significant savings opportunities in areas beyond those targeted in the initial strategic sourcing review. Recommend strategies for overcoming any barriers and/or constraints that may impediments to actually realizing savings.
• Conduct an external peer review of the purchasing function on the Ithaca campus

Major Decisions Made

The functional review of purchasing operations is resulting in a significant change in the role of the central purchasing office. The purchasing office will be reorganized and activities redefined to focus efforts on strategic purchasing activities.

Lead Team Members (since disbanded)

Members of the Steering Committee for the library workforce planning review include:

Joanne DeStefano, Vice President for Financial Affairs & University Controller, Team Chair

Marge Ferguson, Associate Dean Business Administration, School of Hotel Administration

Rod Hawkes, Senior Extension Associate, Applied Economics and Management

Allan Lentini, Director of Finance and Administration, School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Phil Profeta, Corporate Purchasing Director, University of Rochester and Strong Health Center

Paul Streeter, Senior Project Director, Division of Planning and Budget

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