WorkSmart

Why WorkSmart?

As NYU Abu Dhabi settles into its second decade, it is vital that our administrative services are able to scale up, support our growth, reflect the needs of our community, and empower staff, faculty, and students alike to thrive at work and in the classroom. We are leading this change with the help of incredible colleagues across the institution, and we are excited to welcome you on this journey.

What Does WorkSmart Mean for Me?

WorkSmart will:

  • Benefit everyone at NYU Abu Dhabi
  • Improve access to administrative services and reduce response time
  • Give you a space to have your issue resolved in real-time
  • If you’re providing that administrative support, make your day-to-day work more streamlined and automated so that you can focus on strategy and work-life balance

Provost Arlie Petters, CABO Peter Christensen, and I are thrilled to support WorkSmart. We recognize that outdated processes need to be redesigned to better support the needs of our community, and WorkSmart will make that happen.

Mariët Westermann, Vice Chancellor
 

Latest Update

#46: Culture Success Stories (April 2023) | COMPLETED

  • Since January, the Culture Exemplars have been hard at work employing spreading mechanisms to disseminate Transparency, Accountability, Collaboration, and Trust (TACT) across campus. Some recent updates are documented under Progress to Date.

Progress to Date


WorkSmart Portfolios

  • “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” -- Peter Drucker, Management Consultant, Educator, and Author

    Culture informs everything we do, so with the help of experts we’re looking at what key behaviors we need to encourage and incentivize across the University to empower teams and build smarter institutional processes.

    Critical Behaviors

    • Transparency: Make expectations and rationale behind decisions clear.
    • Accountability: Cascade priorities an updates throughout the team.
    • Collaboration: Collaborate seamlessly across organizational boundaries to achieve shared goals.
    • Trust: Trust and empower people to make decisions.

    Leads

    • Eric Hamilton, Vice Provost for Research Policies and Governance
    • Martin Mbugua, Associate Vice Chancellor, External Relations

    Project Manager

    • Reuben Anandakrishnan, Director, Business Analysis and Service Design

    WorkSmart Co-chairs
    Jessica Sederquist, Chief of Staff
    Ted Lee, Senior Director, Integrated Solutions Group

     


Culture Project Exemplar Feedback

Shreekanth Nair

Integrated Solutions Group (ISG)
Wave 1 Exemplar

“We found several common goals between the departments as team leads work together on the projects.”

Dimitar Dimitrov

Integrated Solutions Group (ISG)
Wave 1 Exemplar

“The ISG huddle meetings… became a chance for the teams to connect and engage. They became an optimal medium to provide news, recognize employees, and highlight recent wins. They also provide a space to share and celebrate both professionally and personally.”

Tithi Tiwari

Finance
Wave 1 Exemplar

“A positive workplace culture is a combination of good leadership, appreciation, opportunity, purpose, success, well-being and equity; the mechanisms are an encouraging start to creating the ideal culture.”

Jacob Bikakis

Integrated Solutions Group (ISG)
Wave 1 Exemplar

“During the ‘interdepartmental tour’ between the Wave 1 departments…it was a pleasant surprise to have colleagues not only being curious during the meeting, but also engaging in cross-departmental follow up meetings aimed to explore the intellectual capital, best practices and adoption possibilities."


Students and WorkSmart

Students are already playing an integral role in the development of WorkSmart in the following ways:

  • Student Feedback: Around 100 students attended a focus group, and a significant portion of anonymous submissions to the feedback form included student-related areas of feedback.
  • Student Representatives: The StudentLink & Employee Service Center and the Student Finance project (under the User Journeys portfolio) both have student representatives advocating for their needs.
  • Student Assistants: We have a dedicated student assistant supporting the program, learning key project management skills as they assist in developing and executing elements of different portfolios.

Timeline

WorkSmart aims to achieve both quick-to-implement improvements as well as sustained change across the institution.

Change takes time and this is a very ambitious program of work, spanning over three years, but community members will start to feel the difference throughout the program.

Download an accessible PDF of this timeline