As part of the development of the Organisational Excellence Strategic Plan, we recently consulted colleagues across the University through Town Hall feedback opportunities and focus groups, including sessions facilitated by specialists from Nous Group – thank you to all of you who contributed to these. The findings from these have helped to shape the final version of our Organisational Excellence Strategic Plan and the early priorities. Part of the Nous work on understanding our path to operational excellence was to produce a set of personas, to illustrate the needs of our staff.
Since the Organisational Excellence Town Halls, a number of initiatives have been progressed to help deliver change across our University and test out new ways of delivering our services. These include:
Modernising the Governance is an important stream of work to consolidate our policies and procedures into one place as well as removing outdated and overly complex processes. As part of this we have updated our University’s Charter and Statutes, and changes will come into effect on 1 August 2023.
More personalised support – delivering services with a human face – was a strong theme and whilst we will need time and resource to understand how we can transition many of our processes, we are already seeing these areas develop. For example, in the autumn we will be launching a further two in-person Tech Hubs for colleagues and students, allowing you the opportunity to drop in with any technical issues.
The Nous focus groups identified several areas for initial consideration where efficiencies might be gained, one of which is research contracting. A three-day workshop facilitated by ProcessFix was held earlier this month, with participants from across the University. A critical factor before work can be started on negotiating any type of research contract is to ensure colleagues have full information to work from. We also identified some instances of double-handling which can be removed and opportunities for improved information-sharing. It was also recognised that the assessment sections in Worktribe (in project and contract tabs) could be simplified and improved – a review of these has started. Other actions were agreed and the team will be reconvened in six months to ensure these have been implemented and to adapt processes again if needed. In addition, we are participating in a national benchmarking exercise of research contracting functions in universities, to better understand the sector picture and share good practice.
A project is now underway to develop a Digital Strategic Plan for the University. It is our ambition to deliver a significant and positive step-change in student and staff experiences, enabled through digital transformation. The initial work has involved reviewing our current digital landscape and understanding the gaps to be addressed. In September, we will commence activity to define our vision for the future. This will be achieved through a series of co-design workshops involving staff and students.
A specific observation from the Nous focus groups and wider Organisational Excellence consultations was the challenge of teaching timetables being released too close to the start of term. Following a holistic end to end review, a new process has now been drawn up allowing for an earlier publication of timetables. From the 2024/25 academic year, timetables will be made available from 1 July.
The scope of delivering Organisational Excellence is an extremely broad one, ranging across every part of our University, and, as such, it belongs to all of us. The process, by necessity, must be iterative to ensure we are agile in our decision-making for the delivery of long-term solutions and improvements. Pilots and smaller scale projects enable us to test and modify approaches rather than aim for wholesale changes that are difficult to adapt. We also need to phase and sequence work carefully so that we don’t disrupt our business as usual activities. The progress made so far has established building blocks and helped us to get underway actions to enable delivery of the Organisational Excellence Strategic Plan in support of our University Strategy. Further updates will be provided in the new academic year.
