The Queen’s Renew Program is helping improve professional services across the university by reducing administrative complexity, enhancing coordination between units, and introducing tools and processes that make day-to-day work easier for staff.

Across Finance, Procurement, Human Resources, and Facilities, the program is focused on reducing manual tasks, improving access to information, and creating more coordinated and effective services across the university.

Many initiatives are already improving the way work gets done. In Procurement, new dashboards are reducing the need for manual reporting and giving leaders better insight into spending patterns. In Finance, streamlined budgeting processes and standardized templates are saving staff time and improving consistency across units. In HR and Procurement, new AI-powered chatbots are helping employees get immediate answers to routine questions, freeing up HR and Procurement teams to focus more time on complex support needs.

The following provides an overview of some of the initiatives underway to improve processes, tools, and systems over the next 12 to 18 months.
 

Improving Facilities Services

Feedback from the university’s recent Service Effectiveness Survey identified Facilities services, particularly cleaning and building maintenance, as a key area for improvement.

In response, several initiatives are underway to modernize Facilities operations and improve service delivery across campus.

• Improving custodial operations: Custodial processes are being redesigned to ensure Facilities staff are deployed in the right place, at the right time, and equipped with the tools they need to support the campus community effectively.
• Enhancing maintenance management: Facilities is exploring a replacement for its current maintenance management and work order platform. A modern system would provide updated mobile tools for Facilities staff, automate routine maintenance scheduling, and provide better data to track and plan for the upkeep of Queen’s buildings and infrastructure.
• Reducing paper-based HR processes: Work is underway to digitize time and attendance processes for Facilities staff, reducing paperwork and improving efficiency.
• Strengthening project management: The Facilities team is enhancing its approach to construction project management by introducing enhanced dashboards, training, and reporting tools that give project teams clearer visibility and more consistent practices for planning and delivering capital work across Queen's.

Modernizing University Budgeting

Work is underway to replace the university’s current Excel-based budgeting process with a modern enterprise budgeting tool. The new system is expected to reduce manual work, improve coordination across units, and provide more timely financial information to support planning and decision-making. 

The vendor selection process is nearing completion, and implementation is targeted for Spring 2027.
 

Enhancing Human Resources Services

Human Resources initiatives under the Queen’s Renew Program are focused on improving access to support, simplifying administrative processes, and creating a more consistent service experience for employees across the university.

• Creating a single point of contact for HR support: A new HR query intake system launching in Fall 2026 will give employees a consistent way to access HR support, improve response times, and reduce manual processing for HR teams.
• Automating time and attendance processes: A digital time and attendance solution for casual employees is in development to replace paper-based processes and reduce administrative effort. A pilot is planned for Fall 2026.
• Streamlining term adjunct hiring: A new application is in development to simplify the administrative processes related term adjunct hiring, reduce paperwork, improve turnaround times, and create more coordinated processes across faculties and schools.

For more information about the Queen’s Renew Program, visit the Queen’s Renew Program SharePoint site.