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Advancing Organizational Health across a Private Research University

At a private research university, rapid growth and ambitious aspirations placed operational strain on three enterprise functions critical to the university’s performance and culture.

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A Human-Centered, Data-Driven Path Forward

The need for operational clarity and cultural cohesion emerged from the following challenges:

  • Dining Services faced chronic turnover, inconsistent onboarding and training, and unclear drivers of disengagement—disrupting continuity, increasing costs, and impacting the campus experience.
  • Marketing & Communications expanded rapidly in scope and headcount without a corresponding reset of organizational design, role clarity, and ways of working—creating internal strain and limiting strategic focus.
  • People, Culture, & Belonging needed to establish a Performance Management Office (PMO) but struggled with fragmented systems, outdated technology, unclear intake and governance processes, and inconsistent project management practices—slowing execution and diluting impact.

Rather than simply addressing symptoms, the university sought to understand the root causes behind these operational challenges and pursue sustainable, systemic change that aligned people, systems, and strategy toward a healthier, high-performing future.

The Ask

Conduct a human-centered, data-driven assessment across all three divisions and deliver actionable roadmaps that would improve organizational health, strengthen leadership effectiveness, and enable sustainable, enterprise-aligned change.

The Approach

Using a consistent methodology grounded in collaboration and data (TiER1’s proprietary THRiVE Model), we guided each division through a tailored structured assessment process to uncover insights, build alignment, and enable meaningful change.

Clarified what success needs to look like for each division. Grounded in the university’s mission and future aspirations, we used our THRiVE assessment model to identify key challenges, strengths, and root causes behind turnover, structural strain, and execution gaps within each division.

  • For Dining Services, this included a department-wide survey, more than 20 in-depth interviews, on-site observations at seven food service locations, and external benchmarking on pay, turnover, and training practices.
  • For Marketing & Communications, this included 23 in-depth interviews as well as a survey of the athletic department’s coaches.
  • For People, Culture, & Belonging, this included process mapping and analysis of existing operating procedures, surveys and post-survey interviews of 13 leaders, and a technology audit.

Aligned leaders to insights and engaged them as co-creators. To replace assumptions with shared insight, we facilitated conversations that built alignment, ownership, and momentum across each division. For Dining Services and Marketing & Communications, we partnered with leaders to create blueprints that outline sequenced, prioritized improvements across core workstreams. For People, Culture, & Belonging we facilitated two half-day workshops with leaders to design the PMO strategy.

Delivered division-specific, sequenced roadmaps designed for activation. Each plan balanced near-term action with long-term capability building and connected operational improvements directly to employee experience, service quality, and institutional impact.

  • Dining Services’ Blueprint for Change outlined tangible ways to address real drivers of turnover and enhance engagement through leadership, communication, and onboarding redesign.
  • Marketing & Communication’s Transformational Blueprint outlined tangible ways to ensure team members are in the right roles, understand customer needs, and can better manage day-to-day operations while creating space for innovation.
  • For People, Culture, & Belonging, we developed a five-phase PMO Maturity Model that provides a structured framework to assess and evolve the PMO’s capabilities for continuous improvement. We guided leaders through the design and enablement of phases 1-2 of the model, which included defining goals and KPIs, designing a project management methodology, establishing a governance structure, and developing automated templates and tools.

The Outcome

  • Stronger leadership alignment and readiness to lead sustained change. Leaders have a clear, data-backed understanding of organizational strengths and gaps across the three divisions as well as actionable blueprints that they can continue to refine and activate as the university evolves.
  • Increased clarity around roles, priorities, and ways of working. Teams in each division have a shared understanding of purpose, priorities, and processes, reducing friction across decision-making and enhancing cross-functional collaboration.
  • Greater cultural alignment and enhanced employee experience. Standardized processes and embedded capability frameworks (including a scalable PMO) ensure a consistent employee experience that’s culturally aligned to the university’s mission.
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