A smiling, young, feminine-presenting student with long, dark hair and a medium skin tone, wearing a jacket with a pattern of white, orange and blue squares speaks with a masculine-presenting front desk staff member with a darker skin tone, in a UBC navy blue-coloured polo shirt, who is leaning forward attentively and holding his hand to his face, at the tə šxʷhəleləm̓s tə k̓ʷaƛ̓kʷəʔaʔɬ (The Houses of the Ones Belonging to the Saltwater) residence front desk in q̓əlɬaləməcən leləm̓ (Orca House). On the left is the back of another feminine-presenting person with dark, shoulder-length hair, wearing a green shirt, who is walking past the desk. On the right, behind the front desk, is a feminine-presenting person with a dark skin tone, who is smiling and laughing.

SHCS People Plan

2020–2025

Your SHCS. Your plan.

Aligned with and reflecting many aspects of the UBC Focus on People framework, the SHCS People Plan provides a road map for our journey toward a more exceptional workplace.

In SHCS, we strive to develop and nurture an environment where each colleague is valued, supported, and recognized for their distinct contributions.

Our aim is to shape a workplace experience that allows every employee to say, without hesitation, that they are proud of the work they do in SHCS and the positive contributions they make to the UBC community.

On this page

People Plan themes

The following three themes, which emerged in 2019, remain consistent with our ongoing survey results and will continue to inform how we develop as an organization and a community.

Create a Shared Vision and Strategic Alignment

Build Connection and Community

Develop and Engage our People

Explore the themes

Together, how will we make our workplace even better?

Start with Theme 1

Progress update—2025

Find out what we accomplished in 2025.

View the progress update

2025: a waypoint—not our ultimate destination

At the end of 2025, we reached the final year of the SHCS People Plan, but we have not reached our ultimate destination. This year marks the completion of just one leg in our longer journey toward a more exceptional workplace experience in SHCS.

Since 2020, we have worked hard on the plan’s many priorities, while navigating changes and challenges—and learning more about how to do our best work for the UBC community in a workplace we’re all proud to be a part of.

We accomplished a lot, and we know there’s still work to do. Leaders and staff across SHCS will continue to sustain and build on everything we achieved over the past five years and the plan’s in-progress priorities. Our primary focus will be on strengthening the orientation and onboarding experience, improving recognition, increasing engagement, refining and enhancing professional development opportunities, and enabling career progression and development discussions.

Then, under the leadership of the incoming Associate Vice-President, SHCS, we look forward to establishing new priorities for the next five years.

​Reflecting on the past five years

Pursuing a plan like ours in an organization as big, diverse and complex as SHCS is no small task, and it takes the consistent effort, dedication and contributions of every leader and staff member over many years to make progress.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the work of the People Plan over the past five years in ways both big and small.

Highlights

Here is a selection of highlights of everything we are proud to have accomplished since 2020.

  • Successfully created SHCS’s Vision and Mission statements.
  • Developed 3–5 year plans to guide our strategic direction.
  • Implemented comprehensive staff training programs and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) development initiatives.
  • Delivered Coaching Conversations, a course that engaged nearly 90 participants.
  • Ahead of the Workday launch, provided all SHCS staff with UBC email accounts and established a process for new staff to automatically receive one; plus, delivered information and training on accessing keys systems that require CWL access, such as UBC email and Workday.
  • Enhanced internal communications through strategic plans, templates, tools, resources and education to help with communications at every level of the organization, from SHCS-wide newsletters and the new Staff Hub on SharePoint to team meetings and peer-to-peer discussions.
  • Introduced the SHCS Staff Awards to recognize valuable contributions and achievements, and recipients are recognized at an annual awards reception, on an awards wall in the SHCS Main Office, on the SHCS staff website and through annual email communications.
  • Grew and refined the activities of the Outstanding Workplace Committee, contributing to a significant number of events, activities, initiatives and offerings—from major annual events to popular ticket contests and much more—which regularly engaged staff across SHCS.
  • Offered the Not Myself Today program on mental health literacy for five consecutive years.
  • Created a recruitment toolkit for SHCS (and VPS) staff, which incorporates equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility principles.
  • Transitioned staff training courses to Canvas, with course completion now managed and tracked in Workday.
  • Aligned key SHCS initiatives with UBC plans, including the UBC Strategic Plan, Student Strategic Plan, StEAR Framework, Focus on People 2025, Campus Vision 2050, Housing Action Plan and UBC’s numerous sustainability plans.
  • Launched the VPS Manager Hub (2025) and the People Manager Training program.
  • Released the 2024 SHCS Training Roadmap, which included targeted training opportunities, such as De-escalating Hostility.
  • Implemented a Probationary Assessment Tool within Food Services to support employees and managers more effectively.

For more highlights from 2025 and a summary of our work from 2020 to today, visit the 2025 Progress Update.

Challenges

During this time, we also faced numerous challenges which required us to adjust some timelines, expectations and priorities.

  • The People Plan launch coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The implementation of Workday required significant time, attention and energy.
  • Balancing operational needs with time for training and education remains an ongoing challenge.

W​hat we learned

The first five years of the People Plan also offered plenty of opportunities to learn more about what works best for our organization and people.

  • There was strong enthusiasm from staff across SHCS to co-create the vision and mission.
  • The SHCS Senior Leadership team found the most collective and individual benefit from ongoing and annual opportunities to gather together for shared learning and professional development.
  • Delivering training workshops/sessions for staff across SHCS proved challenging, due to scope and logistics. Whereas, attendance and engagement were significantly higher when offerings were department-specific level versus SHCS wide
  • Onboarding/orientation programs are best delivered at the department level, rather than SHCS-wide, considering the significant differences between operations. For example, Food Services onboarding looks significantly different than onboarding at Child Care.

Background

2019

The process to create the SHCS People Plan began in August 2019, with a number of opportunities for SHCS Vancouver employees to share their voices through one-to-one conversations, an anonymous survey, which received a strong 48% response rate, and facilitated group discussions. Results from the 2017 UBC Workplace Engagement Survey (WES) were also taken into account.

Participants provided candid, thoughtful and valuable insights, enabling the development of the SHCS People Plan, which was designed to address the feedback communicated during that important listening process.

2023

In fall 2023, we embarked on a new staff survey, this time including employees from UBC Okanagan, which received a 49% response rate.

We asked many of the same questions, so we could see how we improved since 2019, and we also asked some new demographic questions to help us make more informed decisions related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

In November 2023, we held a half-day session for SHCS leadership and management from both campuses to review and discuss the anonymous results, identify common areas of focus and propose actions to incorporate into the updated People Plan.

Following that session, departmental leaders received their department-specific results and met with their respective teams to identify actions they could take to address any gaps or needs within their department and in support of the SHCS-wide efforts.

2024

The 2024 survey was shorter than in 2019 and 2023, and it focused on particular areas, such as career development and recognition, where we wanted further input to help ensure we’re making effective progress.

In the 2024 survey, we saw a 38% response rate—707 SHCS staff from both campuses.

In November 2024, the Senior Leadership Team met to review and discuss the anonymous responses and successfully identified department-specific next steps to help advance the People Plan in ways that work best for individual departments, rather than SHCS-wide solutions.