On Monday, May 29, Advance users received an email announcing the successful upgrade to our Oracle environment. This innocent sounding email was the culmination of more than six months of focused systems work by a crack team of colleagues from Advancement and central IT Services. On the Advancement team, I would like to thank Simon Labbett for his incredible leadership in guiding this effort as well as Michael McMullen, Barb Lindsay, Bobbi Kaiser, Jennie Hill, and Rachel Deir for their varied expertise in web, testing, and user experience. Our indispensable partners from IT Services included Charlie Rix (of previous Advancement fame), Anthony Quattrocchi, and Adeniyi Ajao who provided DBA support and project management.
The goal of this initiative was to migrate Advancement’s most foundational database (Advance-web) to the university’s enterprise Oracle Database Appliances (ODA). I took the opportunity to sit down with Simon and Charlie to gain some additional insight on this important project. Here are a few excerpts from our discussion.
Q: Tell me a little more about the project and what it entailed.
Simon: In a nutshell, this project involved migrating our 100GB database (and every piece of data) from our server to the ODA servers in central IT. The work involved hundreds of hours of planning, rebuilding, testing, reconfiguring, and troubleshooting. Our production data is affected by many internal and external processes and migrating to the new server involved numerous changes to scripts, code, backup and rebuild schedules, firewall rules, and data shares.
Q: Why was it important to undertake this project?
Charlie: I know there will be several reasons on your side, but on our side, I think we see it as an opportunity to bring Advancement under the umbrella of our enterprise hardware, our enterprise licensing, and our enterprise support. The ODA consists of stronger, more up-to-date hardware. The more consolidation the university can complete with shared resources, while still providing the autonomy of management of the resource to the department, the better the risk profile and budget considerations. This will take a lot of the load off when you do your upcoming Advance Web upgrade as we can take care of the Oracle side and make sure that the infrastructure is in place.
Simon: Exactly. I look forward to leveraging the upgraded functionality – moving to the Enterprise Oracle version exposes a vast array of back-end administration tools that are invisible to the end-user, but increase availability, redundancy, optimization, and troubleshooting capabilities. There are fewer vulnerabilities at the enterprise level as well.
Q: While I recognize we are only a few days in, what are some of the operational improvements you have observed?
Simon: We knew the speed would improve on this server, but I was surprised at the increased efficiency. Our nightly reporting took close to 7.5 hours to run – it is now finishing in just under 2.5 hours. Our Tableau table refresh has gone from three hours to one hour. This greater efficiency mitigates potential run-time issues and allows us to move those runs back in the nightly schedule, ensuring refreshed data for the extra-early riser. For the Advance user, our more complex reports are finishing in half the time, limiting time-outs, and Advance itself runs much faster – nice wins here.
Thanks to both Simon and Charlie for sharing their experience with me.
Hiring exception requests
As everyone is aware, Queen’s recently announced that the university is running a deficit in our 2023-24 fiscal year. The announcement outlined approaches to address and mitigate the impacts of our budgetary challenges, including imposing an immediate hiring freeze as an interim measure. Further to that announcement, managers across the university received information on a process through which critical hires could be advanced on an exceptional, case-by-case basis. We can now confirm how that process will be applied within the Office of Advancement.
Karen will be the sole arbiter of decisions on requests for exceptions to the hiring freeze. Decisions will be based on maintaining external relationship management capacity as priority, followed by mitigating against significant compromises to core work. Karen will receive monthly vacancy reports to track staff capacity, and her approval should be secured before any time is invested in the exception request process to save work if a request for an exception to the hiring freeze is not granted. Managers should consult with their ALT member to discuss if a request for an exception should be advanced to Karen, and if so, how to do that.
ALT will play a critical role in triaging work following any staffing vacancies that may occur during this hiring freeze and will defer – not reallocate – work where staffing is reduced. This could mean reallocating work to remaining staff and deferring work originally assigned to that individual, but work should be deferred to the equivalent of the impact of the reduction in staffing to protect remaining staff.
This has been difficult news to absorb. We hope this process nonetheless provides greater clarity about how the hiring freeze will be managed within the Office of Advancement. And, as Karen said May 19, remember that this hiring freeze is for now – not forever.
Meeting-free Mondays
The Office of Advancement is recommitting to meeting-free Mondays.
Meeting-free Mondays began as a pilot in May 2020 in response to Advancement staff expressing concern that meeting overload had become an even greater issue since we began working remotely. While there are many strategies that could address this challenge, given our interdependence on one another to advance our work, we felt the greatest likelihood of making a difference would result from a strategy we all shared. ALT therefore committed to piloting meeting-free Mondays across the Office of Advancement to combat meeting overload. Mondays were then reserved for work that requires focus and high-level thinking – such as writing, strategic thinking/planning, analysis, coding, or complex projects. You could still interact with colleagues on Monday if you chose – through emails or quick phone calls for instance — but we made an internal commitment to being meeting-free that one day each week.
At the end of the six-month pilot, in December 2020, Advancement staff voted to continue meeting-free Mondays through an all-staff survey. 88 per cent of survey respondents voted to continue the strategy of one meeting-free day per week. 77 per cent of survey respondents who wanted a meeting-free day selected Monday as the preferred day of the week to be meeting-free. The next-most selected day was Friday, with 13 per cent of respondents choosing that option.
It has been three years since that pilot, so ALT recently revisited the practice. While we will not always be able to influence the timing of meetings with our external stakeholders and campus partners outside of Advancement, based on informal surveys of staff through unit meetings, ALT has decided to recommit to meeting-free Mondays. We do acknowledge that faculty-based advancement teams may have other practices, so faculty-based advancement teams should confirm meeting norms for their teams with their executive directors. Internal advancement meetings for all advancement staff that work in university-wide advancement teams should continue to be scheduled Tuesdays-Fridays – including all standing meetings.
Records & Information Management Awareness Month
By Cheyenne Litt, Data Stewardship Specialist
With June here, we are once again celebrating Records and Information Management (RIM) Awareness Month. This is the third year of celebrating RIM Awareness Month, and we want to use this year’s activities to encourage staff to really consider how having good records and information practices impacts their jobs.
With the second week of June being host to a variety of in-person activities, we will begin our RIM celebration on Monday, June 19, and end on Friday, July 14. Each week, we will share a short post on a relevant RIM topic with an interactive activity to get you thinking about how you interact with records and information in your own role. Here is a sneak peek of what you can expect:
Week 1: Data Literacy – making sense of our data
Week 2: Records of the Past – I-Drive clean-up
Week 3: Records of the Future – best practices for electronic file storage
Week 4: Why RIM Awareness Month – RIM Awareness year-round
And of course, we haven’t forgotten about our tradition of rewarding a lucky participant with a prize. For every activity you participate in, you will receive one entry into a draw for your choice of either a $20 Tim Horton or Starbucks gift card. Activities and prizes are open to Advancement staff only.
All announcements will be posted on QUIRC and to the “RIM Awareness Month ’23” channel on the GROUP-Advancement Staff Microsoft Teams, so make sure to turn on notifications for the channel.
If you have any questions concerning RIM Awareness Month, or have trouble accessing the Team’s channel, please reach out to Cheyenne Litt.
My Experience at Emerging Leaders
By Jacqueline Bonnycastle, Prospect Research Analyst
In the fall of 2022, I was encouraged to participate in the Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) offered by Queen’s Organizational Development & Learning, Human Resources. The ELP consists of monthly full-day training sessions from November to May. Each session is dedicated to a specific topic, from “Managing in a Diverse Environment” to “Leading & Managing Through Change” to “Best Practices in Managing your HR.” In addition, each participant is paired with a mentor, an experienced manager at Queen’s, with whom session topics can be explored and discussed monthly. Ultimately, the ELP aims “to provide new and future managers with the practical tools, support, and resources they need to perform their jobs effectively and confidently.”
At the beginning of the ELP, I thought I knew what I was getting into – a Human Resources program that would, at its core, provide for further professional development. What I didn’t realize was that I would meet 34 other like-minded professionals from departments and faculties across Queen’s, eager to learn new skills and share their unique experiences. Of those 34, I was teamed up with five participants from IT Services, Elentra (Health Sciences), the Student Experience Office, the Canadian Cancer Trials Group, and the Department of Medicine to create a presentation on Change Management. This allowed us to take an in-depth look into strategies and models that can be used to create a positive work environment when faced with large-scale change at an organizational level. As we all know, change is inevitable and sometimes unprecedented (think the COVID-19 pandemic), and the practical takeaways from the ELP are and will be incredibly useful. Not only was it an invaluable opportunity to learn from a diverse group of people, but it was a chance to create new friendships – something I hadn’t expected.
On the first day, I was looking forward to the ELP orientation. As I looked around the 2022-23 cohort, I felt some imposter syndrome – could I complete this program successfully? Did I belong? Then, we were tasked with our first assignment. We were asked to write a letter about what we hoped to have gained from the ELP experience. We received our letters at graduation last week, and I was surprised to see what I had written seven months prior: “… By the end of the program, I would like to have gained confidence in my skills to lead a team and create a happy, energetic, goal-oriented team…” and in conclusion, “You can do it! You are smarter than you think!”
I can truthfully say that my confidence as a leader has significantly grown thanks to a greatly improved reserve of practical management skills and knowledge, professional contacts, and friendships. So, if you feel apprehensive about applying to participate in the Emerging Leaders Program at Queen’s, please do. “You can do it! You are smarter than you think!”
Reminder to register for Advancement Enhancement Day
Join us for a highly anticipated event, Advancement Enhancement Day, on Tuesday, June 13. This engaging and interactive day has been carefully planned by the Advancement Enhancement Planning Committee to provide a unique opportunity for all Advancement staff to connect and collaborate across departments.
We are thrilled to announce our keynote speaker, Dane Jensen from Third Factor, who will share insights on building resilience and navigating challenges in the workplace. This thought-provoking presentation promises to inspire and empower you.
Afterward, we invite you to join us for lunch at Ban Righ Dining Hall, where you can fuel up and engage with colleagues from various teams. Following lunch, get ready for an afternoon of exciting team-building activities that will foster teamwork, creativity, and camaraderie.
To ensure your participation, please register by Tuesday, June 6. Spaces are limited, so don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to connect with your peers and strengthen relationships within our Advancement community.
Feel free to dress casually or show your Queen's University spirit by wearing your tricolour attire!
For any inquiries or additional information, please reach out to Bianca Bruni.
We look forward to seeing you at Advancement Enhancement Day!
Sign-up for free professional portraits
Taking advantage of the fact that many staff members will be on campus during Advancement Enhancement week, there will be an opportunity for staff to have a professional portrait taken of themselves. Updated professional portraits are good for communications and as a department, we’re looking to integrate photographs of staff into new interactive organization charts, which play a crucial role in providing a visual representation of our organization’s structure and help foster connections by putting faces to names as relationships are built.
We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and sign up for one of these sessions.
If you have any further questions, please email Callum Linden.
Employee spotlight
The Employee Spotlight celebrates the arrival of our new and existing staff by profiling responses they share through a fun and informal survey that will help us get to know them better. Be sure to review these profiles and use these fun facts and tidbits to find commonalities, embrace differences, and spark a conversation.
This week, we spotlight Coordinator, Development & Stewardship, Alicia Alves. Learn more about Alicia and where her favourite travel destination has been so far!
Jobs with Advancement
We need your recruitment help. Know great talent that would be a good addition to our team? If so, please promote the vacancies below with your networks and let’s find some amazing new team members.
Applications (including a cover letter and résumé) must be submitted through CareerQ. For more information on this posting, please reach out to either Carla Ferreira Rodrigues or the hiring manager for the position you are interested in.
| Position | Competition number | Closing date | Grade | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Executive Director, Development, Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science | J0523-0494 | June 18, 2023 | N/A | Permanent |