The University is working towards delivering sustainable growth plans by 2032. Our University is in a strong position in a challenged HE environment and the Organisational Excellence Strategic Plan is focused on how we can continue to deliver sustainable solutions and improvements for all of our University community.
As part of this work, it is vital that we recognise the importance of investing in our staff and understanding and managing workloads. To support this, and our size and shape plans, we are keen to improve our information about, and understanding of, our professional services (covering MSA, TAE and CAO staff groups) as well as understand perceptions of the services these teams deliver.
To help achieve this, we are participating in a data gathering and benchmarking exercise. This will help us to build a comprehensive picture of the best way to support and enable our Professional Services staff to deliver the excellent work they do and continue to develop to meet the future demands of our University.
The findings will add to the information we have already acquired from sources such as the Staff Engagement Survey, Townhall meetings and through bespoke workshops.
This exercise, called UniForum, has the added advantage that it will enable us to benchmark across comparable universities within the UK and internationally, allowing us to learn from others.
Uniforum will be in two parts:
- A review of how time is allocated, which will be completed by line managers within Professional Services.
- A ‘Service Effectiveness Survey’ to allow colleagues to share their perceptions of the effectiveness and importance of certain tasks and services. This survey will be shared with a number of academic and Professional Services staff for completion.
The process will begin in early November with the results due in March 2025and we plan to share the headlines from these results with colleagues across the University in Spring 2025. We understand this is an additional task for colleagues who are already busy, so we are working with the supplier, NousCubane, to minimise the time commitment involved in the process.
For further information, including details of drop-in sessions for all Professional Services colleagues, please see the dedicated SharePoint site.