Budget and Planning Talent Development Toolkit

Across segments, higher education institutions are confronting a host of external pressures. With future resources increasingly uncertain, institutions are performing more strategic financial planning than ever before, both at the unit-level and centrally. As a result, staff profiles are shifting from “accountants to analysts”—away from processing transactions and toward analyzing financial data to inform strategic decision-making. Staff also require professional competencies, such as communication and critical thinking, as they spend more time helping units make decisions.

Most institutions do not have the resources to create new financial planning staff roles and hire new staff with these skill sets. Instead, leaders must pursue a three-pronged approach to build more strategic financial planning teams: First, rewrite position descriptions to elevate staff profiles and codify required, more advanced skill sets. Second, update candidate interview processes to fill all vacancies with staff possessing the right mix of technical skills and professional competencies. Third, invest in training for current staff to build new skills and raise performance. This toolkit contains five tools to help finance leaders execute in these three areas.

Download the Toolkit

Section 1: Elevate Budget and Planning Staff Profiles

This section helps leaders revise existing budget and planning roles to require elevated skill sets.

Tool 1: Compendium of Budget and Planning Position Descriptions

Use the 11 position descriptions in this compendium to revise budget and planning position descriptions when current staff depart. Profiled position descriptions are representative of industry-wide hiring trends for budget and planning staff. They illustrate skills to prioritize when hiring new staff, such as data analysis, financial modeling, verbal and written communication, and proficiency in general and technical software. Leaders should also review the descriptions of new roles other institutions have created and consider the need and ability to introduce similar positions on their respective campuses.

Section 2: Upgrade Interviewing Practices to Assess Professional Competencies

This section helps leaders hire candidates who possess the desired mix of technical skills and professional competencies.

Tool 2: Guide to Conducting Behavioral-Based Interviews

Use this tool to update existing interview practices with behavioral-based interviewing (BBI) to assess professional competencies when backfilling roles and/or hiring staff into new roles. After upgrading position descriptions to require new technical skills and professional competencies, leaders need to update their interviewing practices to assess candidates for these skills. While hiring managers can evaluate technical skills through assessments and exercises, they may find it more difficult to evaluate professional competencies. BBI provides a framework to evaluate professional competencies in the interviewing process.

Download the editable versions of the four sequential tool components below.

• Get the editable version of Tool Component 1: Role Competency Selector
• Get the editable version of Tool Component 2: Competency Question Picklist
• Get the editable version of Tool Component 3: Interview Note Sheet
• Get the editable version of Tool Component 4: Multi-Interview Evaluation Template

Section 3: Improve Effectiveness of Budget and Planning Staff

The three tools in this section help leaders improve the effectiveness of budget and planning staff.

Tool 3: Financial Training Curricula for Budget and Planning Staff

Use these curricula to design financial training programs for current budget and planning staff. Programs reinforce foundational finance concepts and institutional processes to improve staff’s day-to-day performance. Leaders can recreate entire training programs or extract courses that target specific staff shortcomings.

Download four institutions’ financial training curricula below.

Tool 4: Higher Education Industry Training

Share these five on-demand webconferences with budget and planning staff to provide a ready-made overview of the higher education industry and industry best practices. These webconferences introduce budget and planning staff to higher education-specific resource constraints and market pressures. They provide staff with critical context on how and why resource allocation and investment decisions are made at their institutions.

• State of the Union: Redefining Leadership in the Face of Market and Mission Shifts
• The Essential Recipe for Process Improvement
• A Roadmap for Continuous Process Improvement
• Business-Driven Growth Planning
• Supporting Academic Leaders in Business-Driven Growth Planning

Tool 5: Budget Planning Training Curriculum for Academic Leaders

Use this tool to design training programs that improve academic leaders’ understanding of budgetary constraints and enhance their resource planning decisions. This tool details the University of Toronto’s department chair mini-MBA training program—an immersive one-day budget planning training program for academic leaders. It includes four case studies for academic leaders to complete to understand how to apply planning best practices in their daily decision-making.