McMaster University invites qualified bidders to submit responses to The University wants to review its current approach and capabilities in its Issues Management (Incident Reporting and Response). The review’s objective is to assess the current state of issues management, identify gaps, and obtain recommendations that provide actionable strategy(s) toward achieving our goal of operational excellence. The University also expects that gaps and recommendations are incorporated into an operational plan. It is also the University’s perspective that reviewing the institution’s current approach against best practices and receiving input from an ‘external partner’ provides objectivity, clarity relative to the organizational structure, issues management, collaboration, communication and change management.
Given the University’s large-scale organizational complexity, incident reporting, responses, and data-sharing requirements, there is an opportunity to clarify and enhance the understanding of leadership and employees ownership, roles, service expectations and direction of issue management. Therefore, there are opportunities to achieve the institutional priority of operational excellence by enhancing coordination levels and streamlining protocols and response levels for university-wide issues management. In particular, the role of employee wellness and psychological safety in providing service expectations in incident reporting and employee comprehension of individual and departmental roles in delivering best practice service levels.
Most importantly, the Service Review is neither an assessment of departmental performance nor a critique of specific departmental intake and case management processes. Departmental performance reviews of issues management remain under the authority of supervising Vice-Presidents. The proposed Service Review includes considerations of how units can collaborate and coordinate activities in delivering the University’s health, safety and well-being response and providing recommendations to leadership for improving coordination of service delivery.
Departments included in the scope of the review: Security Services, Human Resources [Health, Safety, well-being and Labour Relations team], and Enterprise Risk departments’, collectively report and respond to incidents.
Bidders must quote the entire bid. Partial bids will not be accepted.
-
Scope/Objective
The scope of the Incident Reporting and Response review includes overview of requirements and deliverables for successful completion of this engagement with the following objectives:
- Review current approaches to Issues Management (Incident Reporting and Response). Including the reporting of health and safety or security incidents, workplace incidents requiring investigation or fact finding, respondents or complainants in a policy investigation or the subject of a security or violent event at one of the University’s properties
- A review and process map of the health and safety incident management processes, including abeyance and follow-up activities
- An analysis of a minimum of five (5) scenarios that evaluate the stages of Issues Management for:
- Incident Identification, Logging, and Categorization, including decisions regarding collaboration and sharing of information across units and use of policies and guidelines
- Incident Notification & Escalation
- Investigation and Diagnosis
- Resolution and Recovery
- Incident and Resolution Communication
- Incident Closure
- Complete an environmental scan on how higher education institutions have implemented health and safety incident management processes. In particular:
- How they have implemented training for stakeholders
- How they have organized the reporting structures
- Scope of services and core processes
- Outlines of communication flow to ensure proper action, reporting, follow up and employee engagement
- Integration with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs
- Complete a maximum of 20 one or one in-person or small group interviews or table top exercise with Security Services, Human Resources, internal service clients and other identified stakeholders including Crisis Management Group (CMG) members for perspectives on need for holistic and institution wide reporting
- Complete a survey with stakeholder groups to understand current expectations and experiences.
- Review current policies, authorities, processes, and procedures to inform and recommend changes based on best practices
- Complete an analysis of the University current resources and capabilities
- Provide recommendations for engaging third party services, use of community services and the provision of victim services and crisis support to victims of any crime or public safety incidents
- Develop recommendations or a road map for implementing organizational enhancements, including:
- Identifying optimal organizational and leadership and oversight structure (including annual review of decisions and outcomes) across the University, including comprehension of the employee role or student wellness and psychological safety play in the Issues Management (Reporting and Responses) and Management process
- Best practices and processes to optimize resources and administrative structures
- Identifying where current practice is inconsistent with best practice, what service improvements are necessary
- Best practices to existing processes and supporting faculty, staff and students, who are subject of the initial incident response and may be experiencing the impact of the events or processes put in place.
- Best approaches to integrated incident management through both policy responses and individualized supports to affected individuals, using a lens of psychological health and safety.
- o Best practices in integrated Issues Management (Incident Reporting & Response) and Complex Case Management in higher education at the intersection of events which involve multiple offices.
- o Best practices related to integrated incident reporting such that stakeholders are engaged in a timely manner on complex cases related to health, safety, wellness, violence or potential policy violations
- o The role employee wellness and psychological safety should place in the University’s incident response protocols for all involved in such incidents
- o The best way to integrate the University’s current Violence Risk Mitigation Processes
- o Best practices around executing health and safety processes and protocols are followed when criminal or police proceedings are initiated
- o Processes, services, protocols to build trust with service providers across campus
- Provide recommendations for the organizational structure, including levels of authority and gap identification for delivering the necessary coordinated institutional approach to Issues Management (Incident Reporting and Response) and related operations.
- o Potential targets additional investments to support our strategy, fill gaps and deliver on strategic goals, if necessary
- o The appropriate organizational, oversight, support and communication infrastructure in place for best practice workplace incident response and management
- Recommendations on any future one-time and regular training for stakeholders.
