Sharing services is a common practice at many research-intensive universities, with nearly 70 percent of AAU public institutions combining administrative support across liberal arts and sciences. (Read more about the AAU online.) These colleges often have overlapping needs, making shared services more effective and efficient while still preserving specialized support at the departmental level. Additionally, pooling resources promotes equity – ensuring smaller units receive the same level of service as larger ones, regardless of their size or budget. Peer institutions have found that sharing services across liberal arts and sciences units addresses practical challenges and fosters consistent, high-quality service among departments.

Identifying opportunities to be more efficient while simultaneously remaining true to and championing our mission will be especially critical given the university’s direction. For more details on the university’s growth trajectory, visit the Impact 2030 webpage.

No, the aim of this project is not to merge colleges or schools. The process may ultimately yield that colleges and schools will share certain services or resources to expand and enhance access to them, but faculty and shared governance processes and policies will not change through this project. This includes faculty appointment; Retention, Promotion, and Tenure; Tenured Faculty Review; career-line review, reappointment, and promotion; and annual review processes. The project also will not change curriculum management processes and policies.

No. This project is focused on enhancing the quality and delivery of services across academic units. The focus is not on reducing staff, but rather on building high-performing teams in a structure that benefits faculty, staff, and students alike – which is particularly important, given the university’s growth trajectory. For more details, visit the Impact 2030 webpage.

Administrative support, communications and marketing, event planning, facilities, fiscal management, human resources, IT support, scholarship administration, student services and wellbeing initiatives might be coordinated and aligned through this process, among other potential services.

Both. Effectiveness is the ability to choose and execute the right strategies to achieve desired goals. Efficiency, meanwhile, is the capability to perform those strategies with minimal duplication and maximum productivity. It is possible to be efficient at less impactful tasks or to achieve desired results but with considerable inefficiency. A central aspect of the University of Utah’s strategic plan will be to provide high-quality education efficiently and effectively. This project aims to align the university’s resources and organizational structure with its strategic goals.

Efficiency and effectiveness are inter-related concepts. Enhancing efficiency can directly contribute to our effectiveness. By streamlining processes and reducing duplication, for example, we can reallocate resources to areas that directly impact student success and research advancement. And, streamlined administrative processes can reduce the bureaucratic burden on department chairs, faculty and staff, giving them more time and resources to dedicate to student success efforts, teaching, research and professional development. Finally, efficient administrative systems can improve the speed and quality of services provided to students, such as admissions, financial aid, counseling and advising. This leads to a more positive student experience and can contribute to higher retention and graduation rates.

Enhancing efficiency is about simplifying processes, improving workflows and ensuring consistent, high-quality support across all departments; it means reducing duplicated tasks and allowing staff to spend more time on specialized work that aligns with their expertise. This approach ensures that smaller units benefit from the same level of service as larger ones, creating more equitable support. While cost savings can be a benefit of sharing services, the primary focus is on improving the quality and delivery of services across academic units. This project is not aimed at reducing staff numbers.

No. This shared services project is not a critique of the work of the participating academic units. On the contrary, it draws on many of the skills and structures within the individual units to build high-performing teams and creates a strong foundation that enhances the quality of services for all of our faculty, staff and students. This project is an opportunity to build on the successes of the participating academic units by increasing efficiency and collaboration across units at a larger scale, ensuring everyone has the resources they need.

The U has ambitious goals for student success and research advancement. Achieving those goals will require investing resources in students, faculty and staff. Student investments include academic advising, student-facing communications, data infrastructure, first-year support, etc. Faculty and staff investments include wellbeing initiatives, research advancement, HR, IT, and fiscal services, among others. A more efficient organizational structure will allow the university to reallocate resources to these critical areas.

A more efficient organizational structure may also have direct impacts on our success. Efficient administrative systems can improve the speed and quality of services provided to students, such as admissions, financial aid, counseling and advising. This leads to a more positive student experience and can contribute to higher retention and graduation rates. Additionally, streamlined administrative processes can reduce the bureaucratic burden on faculty, giving them more time and resources to dedicate to teaching, research and professional development, while providing staff with larger teams, paths for career development and communities of peers where staff can share expertise, learn new best practices, and problem-solve collectively.

Finally, the project may identify opportunities to enhance faculty collaboration across the colleges. This might include, for example, creating interdisciplinary programs and teaching, advancing research by accessing previously unavailable extramural funding, and increasing the impact of high-profile projects through collaboration within interdisciplinary teams.

While some job responsibilities and reporting lines may evolve as the four academic units transition to sharing specific services, these changes will only occur once decisions are made regarding which services will be shared and what the structure for those shared services will be. Staff expertise is critical to this process. As the professionals most familiar with their day-to-day responsibilities, staff will play a key role in shaping transitions, identifying opportunities for collaboration, and ensuring that services are optimized for efficiency while meeting departmental needs.

Sharing services aims to enhance daily operations, particularly for staff in smaller departments who may lack a robust support network. Shared services will provide access to a collaborative community, facilitating the exchange of information as well as support during crunch times and absences (i.e., vacation, sick time, etc.). Additionally, sharing services streamlines the onboarding process for new staff, preserves institutional knowledge, creates training infrastructure and support, opens up opportunities for staff professional growth, and ensures smoother transitions.

Shared services aren’t designed to make work dull or overly repetitive. Instead, they aim to create more dynamic roles by allowing staff to focus on specialized tasks that match their strengths. For example, a marketing professional working across multiple units could shift from responding to routine content creation requests in a single academic unit to developing and executing comprehensive social media strategies. This might include running multi-channel efforts, tracking analytics, training and supporting staff on executing social media strategy, and refining strategies over time, bringing more variety and meaningful impact to the role.

Shared services also offer opportunities for professional development and career growth by exposing staff to varied challenges across units. For instance, by working across multiple units, a staff member who manages a unit’s finances could develop strategies for budget forecasting, rather than focusing only on bookkeeping for their sole department. These new skills can open doors for leadership roles and career advancement that may not have been available in a single-unit structure.

No. Sharing services doesn’t necessarily mean losing local, specialized support. Shared services in advising, for example, brings best practices like standardized training, shared data systems and advising technologies that both ensure consistency across departments and provide better information for use in the context of particular departments. This approach allows advisors to specialize in department needs while benefiting from broader tools, support and cross-training. Similarly, in fundraising, central support helps streamline large-scale efforts such as donor management and prospect research, enabling department-specific fundraisers to focus on building relationships and tailored strategies. These types of shared services enhance efficiency and effectiveness in part through the process of maintaining specialized local support.

In a shared services model, the objective is to enhance the support provided to faculty and staff by ensuring access to a dedicated point of contact who understands the specific needs of each department. Rather than losing direct contacts, each department or college is assigned a dedicated liaison who will remain closely aligned with the unit. This liaison serves as the primary point of contact, ensuring continuity and a deep understanding of departmental operations.

The goal of shared services is not to disrupt existing relationships, but to provide faster, more specialized support while maintaining a consistent and familiar point of contact for each department.

Well-designed shared services are able to reduce response times by utilizing a broader pool of experts. In the event that a faculty or staff member’s primary contact is unavailable to assist them, shared services models allow another qualified team member to step in, minimizing delays in response.

Change can feel disruptive when new processes and structures are introduced. Ultimately, shared
services aim to enhance support for and morale among teams by:

1. Building community and support: Staff in smaller departments gain access to a broader network, reducing isolation and providing more opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
2. Offering workload relief: Shared services can reduce individual workloads by distributing tasks more evenly and ensuring staff have backup when taking time off.
3. Providing career development opportunities: Cross-training and access to new resources can enhance skill sets, promoting personal and professional growth and creating opportunities for career advancement.
4. Consistency and efficiency: Streamlined processes reduce frustration with redundant or inefficient practices, making work more manageable and meaningful.

Our long-term goal is to build high-performing teams and foster a stronger, more collaborative environment that benefits individuals, teams and the university as a whole. Teams will be closely involved throughout this process to minimize disruption and create the smoothest possible transitions for services that will ultimately be shared.