"How is the ALT working together to strategize campus initiatives? Is there an opportunity for increased collaboration among the ALT units regarding strategic planning to discourage and reduce the siloed culture and increase efficiency across Administration?"
Response:
The last year and a half have shown us that collaboration leads to impactful actions. The Central Ticket Office (CTO) and Events & Transportation (E&T), for example, made functional shifts to reduce administrative burden by transitioning the collection of in-person citation payments to CTO. This partnership allowed both departments to optimize their staffing and align the responsibilities to each department’s functional strengths. E&T focused on traffic management and enforcement and CTO managed the cash handling and customer service elements. Administration also created marketing and communication hubs that are now providing services to all the Administration departments. The service expansion minimized the need for departments, who did not have this resource in the past, to outsource marketing and communication needs and potentially realizing some financial savings. The effort also resulted in a more consistent presentation and message.
Future opportunities to collaborate across the organization are considerable. Each individual team and unit should be considering how they can engage and contribute towards achieving the following strategic goals.
Improve customer experience
Each of us can contribute to improving the processes and methods used to serve customers. We can reach out to other colleagues throughout Administration to identify and standardize best practices, identify and address common challenge and bottlenecks, and train and develop staff. We can use our customer satisfaction surveys to uncover opportunities for improvement, focus on areas that most impact our customers and create action teams involving various units. We can evaluate our purchasing habits and vendor services and see where other units may have similar interests which could improve purchasing efficiencies, better delivery times and faster customer response time.
Elevate safety / prevent and reduce accidents
Safety is paramount to UCLA. We can all contribute to making the campus safer by completing safety training, becoming a safety warden, engaging with your safety wardens regarding changes to your work environment and participating in safety teams that champion improvements to reducing and minimizing safety hazards. We can collaborate with colleagues in related units to identify areas with increasing or changing risks and developed prevention or risk avoidance plans.
Use sustainable practices Also on the horizon is meeting the UCOP Zero Waste goals by 2025 (25% below baseline) and 2030 (50% below baseline). Sustainability is one area where collaboration is critical to success. Administration operations, who have the expertise in structuring green buildings, providing alternative transportation and sustainable foodservice can influence the use of sustainable practices and contribute to meeting these goals by developing shared strategic initiatives.
Additionally, Administration departments will be at the core of the planning and implementation of the 2028 Olympics to house athletes, park spectators, manage event capacities and ensure technology capability and security, among other things. We will see a more concerted effort from the ALT to develop initiatives that integrate Administration’s areas of expertise to deliver a well-executed production.
Although each department has particular initiatives to continually improve their operations, the ALT acknowledges that it is important on a strategic level to think about the cross-functional opportunities that will drive Administration’s vision to deliver innovative, high-value programs and services.
