Editor’s note: The following is part of a series of monthly updates on the HR and Finance Alignment project from the Alignment Project Team. This update includes a message from executive sponsors Vice President for Human Resources Eric Ray and Vice President for University Operations Brendan Hanlon. The HR and Finance Alignment Initiative strengthens and modernizes CSU’s HR and finance functions to better support the academic mission, expand career pathways and enable more strategic, effective ways of working.
Dear Colleagues,
As we continue advancing the HR and Finance Alignment initiative, we want to share a brief update on where the work stands today.
The project team has been translating the feedback gathered through interviews, surveys, and organizational reviews into more defined future-state design concepts. This phase marks an important shift from listening, understanding, and assessment to structured design and operational planning. We expect next month’s update to include more details about upcoming operational steps. We appreciate your continued attention and patience as this work develops.
In the meantime, following feedback from many, we’re happy to share a summary of the engagement and activities completed so far to provide a clearer snapshot of progress and how various stakeholders have been involved along the way.
We wanted to share our appreciation for the members of our newly formed Change Council for their willingness to participate at this early stage. Their willingness to engage early, learn about the project, and serve as local connection points will be an important part of how we strengthen communication and feedback as the work progresses.
Finally, we’re pleased to share the updated version of the HR and Finance Blueprints. You may recall seeing dozens of boxes on slides capturing the many functions of our HR and Finance work. Through collaborative design sessions with staff across the university, these have been refined and updated. Thank you to all who helped ensure these accurately reflect the work being across campus to ensure the future state operating model also reflects the work.
We recognize that this work has real implications for many of you, and that uncertainty can be challenging. We’re committed to sharing information and staying in steady communication as concepts and plans continue to evolve.
Thank you for your continued engagement and partnership as we work together to strengthen administrative support across CSU.
Brendan Hanlon, Vice President for University Operations/CFO and Eric Ray, Vice President for Human Resources.
What’s happened
Over the past several months, the project team gathered feedback through interviews, work analysis surveys, and organizational “as-is” reviews. That input is now informing development of future-state organizational design concepts and operating models. These activities were discussed in January’s Alignment Project Update posted on SOURCE.
Here are new resources available on the project website:
- Functional Blueprints: Last fall we shared an initial draft of the Blueprints, which are a high-level summary of all the HR and Finance functions necessary here at CSU. A series of collaborative design sessions reviewed, refined, and improved these drafts to arrive at clear definitions of the extensive HR and Finance functions across the university. These provide a shared understanding of what these functions include and how they should be grouped together. These documents are posted in the Project Documents section of the Alignment website.
- Design Principles: These principles act as a shared compass for building the future HR and Finance model. They outline what strong, effective operations should look like in the future — such as clear roles and responsibilities that help people make decisions and do their work well. While each function has its own design principles, both align to 5 common themes for the future. The complete set of principles being used to steer future-state decision making is posted in the Project Documents section of the Alignment website.
- Engagement Summary: This summary documents engagement efforts undertaken to support the Alignment initiative. It describes participant involvement and key activities to date, offering a reference point for how stakeholder input has contributed to ongoing work. This summary reflects the current state of work and will be refreshed as new information is available.
What’s upcoming
February’s work is focused on refining the structural concepts that will guide implementation. This includes:
- Exploration of future-state operating models: An operating model explains how the university’s work gets done across people, processes, technology, and decision-making. It turns strategy (“what we want to achieve”) into execution (“how we work together to achieve it”).
- High-level development of the future-state organizational designs: Organizational design is the process of shaping the structure, roles, reporting lines, and governance that enable the operating model to work in practice.
- Continued refinement of the service delivery models: A service delivery model describes how an organization consistently delivers a service through clear roles, escalation paths, and performance measures.