16 Jul 2015
Change Team winners of prestigious Times Higher Education award
The Change Team has been awarded Best Strategic Planning Team at the 2015 Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards (THELMAs).
The THELMAs, now in their seventh year, celebrate leadership and management in the UK’s higher education institutions.
The change management programme was launched in 2013 facilitated by a small institutional Change Team. The aims of the programme were to:
• Embed a common methodology and approach to change within our services and departments
• Improve the experience of our processes by end users
• Avoid a top-down disempowering approach that results in defensive disengagement and hence the failure of change
In implementing change, the team have been joined by secondees from Schools and Professional Services and worked closely with colleagues to literally follow processes around the institution to understand the service provided to the customer/user. Many processes cut across different parts of the University and this can result in things being handed off with no additional value, duplication and delays as people batch work.
The University Teachers project shows how effective the methodology can be, with significant improvements to the service provided to colleagues who join the University to deliver teaching on a part time basis each year.
Current process review projects at different stages and include the student admissions process, recruitment of staff, maintaining facilities, assessing and supporting the additional needs of students and scholarships and bursaries.
Anne Mumford, Director of Change Projects, said: “Managing change is hard. In Higher Education it can be particularly hard due to the complexities of the processes and the critical and sceptical approach enshrined in our organisations.”
“We have been literally ‘walking in the footsteps’ of users of our services, experiencing some of the problems they find and facilitating significant re-thinking of what we do. I continue to be amazed at the commitment of colleagues and how hard they work and what the Change Team can do is to help engage those involved in one part of the process to work with others to make improvements”.
Actor and comedian Jack Whitehall hosted the event which was attended by over 1000 people at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
Full details of the winners can be viewed here