Our team sits within the VP Operations and our work in allowing us to deliver on the enabling priorities in UCL Strategic Plan.
With more than 50,000 students, 18,000 employees, 11 faculties and 100+ departments, all spread across 240 buildings in and around London, that’s no easy job. While the year has flown by, we have made significant progress.
Ian Hammond, UCL’s Director of Strategic Change, outlines how the team is working and shares some of the highlights to date.
#1 Designing services that people love
A key area of focus has been developing our approach to service design. We want to create services that people love, want to use and that join up people with processes, policy and technology. It’s building on the great work of tools like InsideUCL which simplifies everyday tasks and keeps staff up to date with what’s happening at UCL, and MyServices , a one-stop-shop for expertise and advice to get things done.The all’important element in all this work is of course you, our users. So, we’ve agreed ’Service Design’ principles and built a ’Faculty Design Authority’. We use this forum to test that new services will work in our complex organisation - making sure we place our communities at the heart of change.
#2 Joining up people, process and technology
There are very few change and transformation programmes which don’t have a digital element to them. Over the last year, we have been working hard with Ben Hine, Chief Information Officer, and his team in ISD to develop our approach to digital delivery.We’ve evolved our digital governance, including a greater focus on delivery and financial outcomes, longer-term roadmaps and a new approach to business cases. We’ve also welcomed a new committee chair and new academic members to make sure we’re delivering the right outcomes for UCL.
And right now, we’re using a new planning and prioritisation process for the first time - allowing us to make sure we are reaching the maximum positive impact whilst focussing our efforts on the UCL Strategic Plan. We’re also giving the university a much stronger voice in the prioritisation decisions we’ll make, with professional services and academic leadership involved in the decision making.
#3 Services Simplification
’ Services Simplification ’ is the name of a set of initiatives focused on improving and aligning the experiences of people delivering and using UCL’s services. One by one, we’re looking at how we improve the services we offer to our UCL community. We’re looking at how we make them better, more effective and more efficient while also giving staff and students the best possible experience.Every service is at a different stage, so we’re using a set of tools including Continuous Improvement, Operating Model Design and Service Design, to look for opportunities to improve (don’t worry, we have a glossary of terms !). We’re working together with Faculty Operations, led by Beth Beasant, Executive Director of Faculty Operations, and working collaboratively with central teams, Faculties and Departments to go through Discovery, Design and Delivery phases.
So far, we’ve seen improvements in staff satisfaction and efficiency across several programmes. Our initiatives have enabled ISD and HR to revamp their request system and have now processed more than 340,000 requests in MyServices since it launched in August last year. We’ve seen significant improvement in our Education and Student Administration services by engaging ten out of eleven faculties to review their EASE structures.
None of this work however, happens in a vacuum - We have kept up a 2-way conversation, getting input and feedback across UCL, having now spoken to more than 700 people in our latest round of roadshows. Thank you to everyone who joined us for those and for spending your time giving us the valuable feedback we need to make informed decisions that work for our teams.
You can find a round up of Services Simplification activity on our SharePoint site.
#4 Collaborating together for change
To clarify our mission, fully understand UCL’s needs and sequence our work, we’ve set up group of reps across the university so that we can better understand as wide a range of perspectives as possible to inform our work.By taking this collaborative approach, we have enabled (literally) hundreds of conversations that are shaping the direction of our programmes.
All of our Strategic Change teams use this approach to support our communities with their skills and expertise. These are:
- Portfolio Alignment & Reporting
- Business Analysis
- Service Design
- Change Management
- Programme Management.
So far, we’ve supported 15 change programmes and delivered 145 pieces of business analysis already this year. We make sure we are transparent and work in a consistent way as a team, supported by our Strategic Change Programme Management Office (PMO) and sharing our methodology.
#5 Building a great team
Last but by absolutely no means least, we’ve been clear from the start that solving difficult problems needs a talented team, with specific expertise, and that’s what we’ve built.Together we have grappled with prioritisation and resourcing decisions, looking at what we can support directly, and where we need to enable others to implement change locally. So, we’ve also collaborated on a suite of Advisory services and Self-Service tools for our UCL community - we’ll be launching those in the coming weeks.
Thanks again to everyone collaborating with us on this journey so far.
- University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (0) 20 7679 2000
