Update on New Administrative Model
Dear colleagues,
Today marks the official launch of our new administrative model. As we begin this work together, I am writing to describe the current state of administrative support, the significant work still ahead, and the many ways we will be gathering feedback from our community.
Over the past several weeks, administrative leaders have moved quickly but deliberately to bring new teams together. Staff are transitioning to these new teams, settling into new spaces, and starting to learn new processes and ways of working together to advance our academic mission. The Harvard Center for Workforce Development continues to provide resources and support to staff during the transition. We are deeply grateful for the grace and flexibility shown by our staff, who have worked tirelessly to ensure continuous support for our schools, departments, centers, and units. They have shown remarkable resilience and dedication during this time of immense change.
While we have made progress, the transition to the new model will continue beyond today. For most administrative areas, recruitment is ongoing, and we are working as quickly as possible to fully staff these areas. For the next few weeks, some services may continue to have evolving points of contact or longer response times as teams come together and get started. The Navigating the FAS Administrative Services website shows the status of individual service areas and current points of contact. We appreciate your patience and understanding as this work progresses.
Departments and centers continue to have access to expanded support through the Rapid Response team, including new, drop-in sessions where department administrators and executive directors can bring or escalate urgent issues for support.
Community listening and feedback
Hearing from all of you is central to continuously improving and refining the new model. We are committed to listening and to acting on your feedback in real and timely ways.
Over the coming months, we will continue to engage with faculty, staff, and researchers to understand what is working well, where you are encountering obstacles, and what adjustments would make administrative support more effective and responsive. Your feedback will help us improve processes and ensure we can provide strong support now and continuously improve that support over time.
With this goal in mind, leaders across administrative areas will be reaching out to department chairs, center directors, department administrators, and executive directors to deepen relationships and to hear how things are going. I am also continuing to meet with individual chairs, attend divisional and departmental faculty meetings, join staff meetings within each administrative area, and host weekly office hours for department administrators and executive directors.
We have also launched a new “Tell us how we are doing” form and email address to make it easy to share feedback at any time. Please use them to offer suggestions, identify challenges, ask questions, or propose ways to improve administrative support and processes.
And finally, we have convened two important governance groups. The first is the FAS Administrative Services Governance Board, which will provide oversight of FAS administrative services. The second group is the FAS Administrative Services Advisory Council, which will offer a structured way to offer feedback on the effectiveness of the administrative support.
Charting progress
Later this month, we will be launching a new dashboard that tracks how long some common requests take and how much work each team manages. The dashboard will be updated monthly and open to everyone in the FAS. We hope that you will also provide feedback on the metrics that are most meaningful for your work, so that we can be sure we’re measuring what matters most.
Thank you for your patience, partnership, and continued engagement. We recognize the toll this transition has taken on our community – morale has suffered, and we continue to ask a great deal of you. We aspire to be a place where you feel supported, valued, and able to do your best work. As we navigate these changes, we are committed to listening carefully and acting on your feedback, addressing what is not working, and continuously improving support for our teaching and research mission.
Sincerely,
Warren
FAS Dean for Administration and Finance