HR Next is an exciting campuswide initiative designed to reimagine the University of Chicago’s Human Resources organization and enhance our processes and service delivery model to better support all UChicago faculty, staff, and student employees.

A recent review of the HR function in May – June 2025 identified several opportunities to improve and enhance the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of many of our HR services, processes, and systems. We are also in an era of tremendous change in the workforce with a new generation of faculty and staff, increased competition for talent, and more demands for elevated technology skills and knowledge. For all these reasons, we aim to design an HR model that is well-positioned to meet the needs of our future workforce and provide our campus community with state-of-the-art services, programs, and technologies. By embracing a more integrated and strategic approach, we can deliver a wider range of value-added services and better support the diverse needs of our UChicago HR community.

This transformation will allow us to streamline and enhance our HR processes, creating greater efficiencies and leveraging economies of scale for the benefit of all faculty, staff, and student employees.

The process is guided by our executive sponsors and steering committee in collaboration with the established HR transformation working group. The HR transformation working group, which consists of 12 campus stakeholders, works in collaboration with Segal consultants to identify opportunities to enhance Human Resources at UChicago, including assessing current strengths and areas of improvement. The Central Human Resources Leadership Team (HRLT) plays a vital role in driving progress toward the project’s goals and final recommendations.

The HR Next project team will consider various scenarios for the possible implementation of a new HR model.

This project will conduct a comprehensive review of UChicago’s processes and practices that provide the best opportunities to gain efficiencies and improvement, including an assessment of Talent Acquisition, Compensation and Classification, Performance Management, Promotion, and Workday. A primary goal of the HR transformation working group will be to map and reengineer HR processes to reduce layers of review and bottlenecks, significantly reduce or eliminate paper-based forms and processes, identify opportunities to automate processes with existing or new technology solutions to gain efficiencies and elevate service levels. 

Updates will be posted to this website. Announcements will also be made throughout the project and shared in our existing HR Community channels and forums such as our monthly HR Headlines newsletter, our bi-monthly HR Community meetings, and in The Citizen employee newsletter. HR partners and other stakeholders may also receive invitations to special webinars and working group sessions as well.