Talking Stick - May/June 2013 - 27

staff. At the college and university
level, staff can make their way to
housing from the controller’s office
or, as in Stephanie Smith’s case, the
campus newspaper. Before becoming
the business operations specialist
for the department of housing and
residence life at the University of
West Georgia in Carrollton, Smith
had two prior positions in finance.
“I worked as a business manager for
my university’s newspaper for four
years while I finished my undergrad.
My first after-graduation position in
finance was working as the business
manager of a basement waterproofing
company.” Smith’s story and path is
not uncommon, and it is this unique
experience that helps her and others
like her to be successful in their quest
for efficiencies, process improvement,
and change.

it’s tHe small tHings
tHat matter
Process changes, no matter how big or
small, can make a significant impact
on a work environment, and in most
cases they end up benefiting the end
user (residents) the most. Initiating
process changes can begin with
something as simple as determining
if staff have the right tools. Tom Snell,
manager for finance and initiatives for
student housing and residence life at
the University of Toronto Scarborough
in Ontario, Canada, speaks to this
simple fact. “People need the right
tools to be productive, so we’ve made
sure that most of our staff have
laptops and smartphones. While
obvious, it’s certainly helped our team
be more responsive and flexible, and
the mobility allows us to make better
use of our space.” He goes on to
explain that “besides efficiency gains,
investing in mobile tools also provides
for better crisis response as we can
have all hands on deck from remote
locations.”
The University of North Florida

in Jacksonville has accomplished
successful financial process changes
by utilizing online contracts and
automating payments. Lola Argalas,
assistant director for budget and
finance, describes the benefits of these
changes. “This was a tremendous time
savings for both the housing office as
well as the cashier’s office. Housing
no longer had to deal with checks or
compiling deposits, and the cashier’s
office no longer had to post the
payments to the student’s account. Not
only did this save a significant amount
of time, but we were able to take the
human element out of the picture
and thus avoid errors.” An additional
success that Argalas is proud of is
automating the processing of Florida
Prepaid Housing Plans (FPP).
“Previously we would manually input
each student’s payment request into
FPP’s billing system, and we would
wait almost four weeks for payment.
Once we received payment, the
cashier’s office would manually post
the payment to the student’s account.
This took a great deal of time, and the
manual processing left too much room
for error. We now send an electronic
file to FPP, and they identify who has
the FPP plans and return the file.” A
process to post the payment directly to
the student’s account via an automated
procedure was also included in this
redesign. Argalas explains that “This
has saved time and provided more
accurate posting to students’ accounts
for both housing and the cashier’s
office as well. It has also allowed us
to receive payment within a few days
as opposed to four weeks.” Both of
these improvements have saved the
University of North Florida countless
hours and dollars and were made
possible through collaboration and an
investment of time and energy.

Get in Gear
Three ways to foster creative
thinking in order to address process
issues:

1.

Make it a priority.
Companies such as
Google and Atlassian have
employees spend 20 percent of
their time working on projects that
get them excited and that they are
passionate about. Use this concept
in your work environment.

2.

Recognize contributions.
Help employees see that
even the smallest process
improvement can have a significant
impact, and publicly recognize those
who made it happen in order to
drive this point home.

3.

Create a process
improvement team. Odds
are there are many staff
in your department who have an
interest in process improvement.
Find them, assemble them into
a cross-functional workgroup
tasked with departmental process
improvement, and set them loose.

bumps in tHe roaD
The journey to process improvement
does not come without its challenges
– red tape, bureaucracy, and politics
May + June 2013

27
Talking Stick - May/June 2013

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