UniForum Timeline
- April/May – Program Team prepares staff and supplier datasets and assign records to primary areas. Respondents are assigned based on their prior year data.
- End of May – Program Team confirms Primary Contacts and provides datasets for Primary Conacts for review.
- May/June – Service & Activity Data Collection (Respondent coding)
- June/July – Quality and Function Reviews (Primary Contacts and Function Leads)
- End of July – Final Checks and Data Submission
- September/October – Service Effectiveness Survey
- October – December – University Briefing and Town Halls
Roles within the UniForum Process
Program Team
The Program Team oversees the UniForum program at McMaster and manage the day-to-day support and mechanics of data collection.
Data preparation, troubleshooting, record reassignments, additions, corrections and activity coding support are provided by this team.
Primary Contact
Primary Contacts are typically Senior Managers in a service/academic unit.
They oversee Activity Collection activities for a group of Respondent Collection Areas once the collection has been launched. They invite Respondents to complete time activity allocations and reporting relationships for the staff and/or suppliers in their primary area. They also monitor the progress of the collection and data quality during the 3-4 weeks of data collection.
Respondent
Respondents are usually managers of business units or supervisors of small teams and are selected by the Primary Contact to perform the activity coding for the collections.
Staff Respondents are often directors, managers, supervisors or coordinators who have either direct knowledge of the staff and their works, or have access to this information.
Supplier Respondents are often finance managers, and have good knowledge of the third-party contract work that has been performed during the year.
Respondents complete the collection data (the allocation of time to activities for each staff member or supplier in their collection). In addition, they provide data on reporting relationships (the number of Direct Reports for each staff member). They are typically given 3-4 weeks to complete this exercise.
Function Reviewers
Function Reviewers are typically the senior managers of the unit.
Function Reviewers conduct an overall review of Respondent’s coding for a support service function. The scope of the review includes Respondent coding provided for the Staff and Supplier collection.