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Over the past six months, the Queen’s Renew Program has been making steady progress towards its goal of enhancing the university’s professional services to be more effective, financially sustainable, and to ensure that Queen’s staff have the right tools, systems, and processes they need to do their best work. 

Finance, Budget, and Human Resources Process Improvements  

The Queen’s Renew Program has been focused on identifying opportunities for process improvements in finance, budget, and HR, including finding ways to make routine administrative tasks more efficient and consistent across the university. This includes assessing some of the key HR and financial processes in faculties, schools, and shared service units, as well as in central HR, the Budget Office, and Financial Services.  

Consultations with more than 70 staff members highlighted opportunities to make processes more consistent, reduce reliance on manual tasks, and improve access to modern tools and systems.  

Based on employee feedback, several process improvements have been recommended that can be implemented quickly, such as making better use of existing technology to track casual hires or developing standardized financial templates and real-time dashboards. Longer-term improvements were also recommended, including implementing a modern budgeting tool, establishing a centralized HR query intake solution, streamlining the number of procurement contracts for routine purchases, and increasing automation in invoicing processing. Some of the smaller scale process improvement recommendations will be implemented over the coming year, while others will require more time, consultation, and planning to put into place.

Uniforum Benchmarking Data Collection Underway  

Benchmarking is an important part of the Queen's Renew Program as it enables the university to compare how professional services are delivered at Queen’s with peer institutions in Canada and around the world. This past spring, Queen’s launched the second year of its participation in the UniForum global benchmarking program for professional service operations.  

Queen’s will be collecting data for the UniForum program through the Activity Data Collection, which looks at how professional service activities are delivered across campus by employees and suppliers, as well as the relative cost of delivering those activities. In Fall 2025, Queen’s will launch the second UniForum Service Effectiveness Survey, which provides insights into employee satisfaction levels with the university’s professional services.  

Learn more about UniForum at Queen’s on the Queen’s Renew Program website.

What’s Next for the Queen’s Renew Program

The Queen’s Renew Program is a multi-year initiative that is still in its early stages. Specific timelines and details are still in development, and the program will continue to evolve through ongoing consultation, planning, and implementation.  

Further updates will be shared as the Queen’s Renew Program progresses.