To enable the delivery of Loughborough’s new Strategy, it will be critical to increase capacity for all colleagues, whether you are an academic or a Professional Services member of staff. However, colleagues already have high workloads, and we will not be able to create capacity through strategic financial investment (eg new roles) alone. 

The purpose of Project Enable is to create capacity and thinking time in the work we do to enable the advancement of our strategic priorities by ensuring that the way we work is efficient, effective and in keeping with Loughborough’s values. 

Project Enable aims:

• To reduce administrative burdens for both academic and Professional Services staff, creating space and a mature approach to risk appetite
• To create more time for staff to pursue research and innovation endeavours whilst maintaining the student experience
• To reduce net workload across the University, not to move work between structures
• To improve the wellbeing and work-life balance of staff, relating to workload pressures.

Project Enable is sponsored by the Vice-Chancellor and was introduced to members of Senate at its most recent meeting. It has a Programme Manager and is being driven by a Programme Board – chaired by the Chief Operating Officer – comprising colleagues in a range of roles and from a range of Schools and Professional Services.

We are seeking volunteers from all job families across the academy and Professional Services to assist us with the first phase of the project (to April 2022), where we will be identifying what takes up people’s time that we may be able to stop doing, or what we might be able to do differently. 

There are two ways in which you can get involved (both of which are open to academic and Professional Services colleagues), and further information about each role is provided via the links below:

-       Join our Observer team and help us have conversations with colleagues in informal observations throughout the University. If you have good observation skills, good listening skills, are organised and enjoy meeting new people, we need you! Find out more and express your interest here.

-       Volunteer to be one of the colleagues that we speak to in our informal observations. This will involve one of our observers joining you during a typical morning/afternoon, or whilst you are working on particular activities, to gain insight into how we can reduce workload and burden through changes to our systems, processes, behaviours and the tasks that colleagues are asked to do.  Find out more and express your interest here.

We ask that colleagues complete the Expression of Interest forms by 12 noon, Wednesday 2 March. Full guidance and, for those joining our Observer team, a briefing session will be provided shortly after this.

Questions and queries about the programme, and any of the volunteer roles, can be directed to Dr Jenna Townend (Strategic Change Programme Manager): j.townend2@lboro.ac.uk.