What we do

Organisational Development

Mission Statement

UCL's Human Resources Strategy supports efficient, fair, consistent and sustainable people management and development enabling UCL to compete with the best universities in the world.

The Organisational Development (OD) service aims to build UCL's organisational capability to achieve its academic mission and navigate change successfully. We also provide the leadership to exploit fully the combined expertise and resources of all UCL’s in-house training providers, by developing a community of practice with shared aspirations and consistent service standards.

Vision

• OD will become a real tool of organisational success; underpinning and enabling the achievement of our academic mission
• UCL will be recognised as a Centre of Excellence for Organisational Development across the HE sector
• The OD team will be recognised as the most professional, capable and valued OD team in the HE sector.

Working in partnership with the Senior Management Team, UCL's Faculties, Professional Services and HR Consultancy colleagues, we aim to:

• enhance the quality of leadership and management at all levels in UCL;
• ensure organisational change is aligned and delivers its anticipated benefits and transitions are smooth and effectively supported;
• develop a learning curriculum that reflects UCL’s strategic challenges, focuses on agreed learning priorities, is of the highest quality, represents value for money and delivers measurable organisational impact;
• develop the personal and professional capability of individuals and teams across UCL to support the achievement of Faculty and UCL strategic objectives;
• enable research staff to access transferable skills for personal and career development purposes;
• develop and maintain effective information systems for administering and recording training, learning and development activity;
• expand our use of modern learning technologies where appropriate and cost-effective, to enable accessible and remote learning solutions for all staff, irrespective of working hours or location;
• develop a range of internal and external partnerships for delivery;
• provide the leadership to bring together and leverage the combined expertise of all UCL's in-house training providers working in a community of practice to consistent service standards;
• develop a suite of performance metrics to assess the impact of learning interventions on UCL's performance.

Our service proposition incorporates:

• Facilitating a UCL- wide learning needs analysis that underpins strategic direction;
• Designing, delivering and commissioning appropriate and effective learning solutions for individuals and teams at all stages of their development;
• Running a centrally-delivered Professional Development Programme of workshops, courses, briefings, desktop learning and conferences covering Leadership and management / Continuous personal and professional development /transferable skills and career development for research staff / Induction for new staff / Study assistance support;
• Providing bespoke organisation design and development support to leaders and managers in departments and faculties;
• Providing professional support to culture change initiatives;
• Delivering or brokering a range of services including coaching and mentoring;
• Managing the Study Assistance Scheme.

Our Approach

Organisational Development works to achieve its mission by:

• providing organisational diagnosis, support, expertise, advice and information that enable staff and departments to make informed decisions about how best to develop their knowledge, skills, competence and capability;
  
  
• challenging assumptions and constraints, stimulating debate and creating new and improved options for the delivery of organisational and staff development services that will underpin UCL's success;
  
  
• putting in place partnership working and a supporting infrastructure that ensures effective use of all in-house training and development resources, ensuring the optimum impact on individual, team and organisational performance;
  
  
• evaluating our contribution to UCL's overall vision and strategic direction;
  
  
• delivering cost effective services without compromising on quality.

OD are committed to establishing a culture of equal opportunities and diversity to support the continuous development of all staff.

How might You, Your Team, Department, Faculty & School benefit?

Participating in our induction, open or bespoke programmes will enable you to be:

• more aware of UCL's aspirations and ambitions as a global university;
  
  
• better prepared and equipped to deal with the changing world of work, higher education and UCL;
  
  
• more able to understand yourself and your impact on others in regard to building effective working relationships;
  
  
• developing knowledge, skills and competencies that support effective people management and build efficiency and effectiveness in work systems and processes;
  
  
• confident to initiate, lead and embed organisational change (at a team, departmental, school level);
  
  
• capable of reflecting and learning from your own and others experiences, creating equal opportunities for yourself and others;
  
  
• aware of ways to sustain and enhance your career, contribution and employability;
  
  
• manage yourself and others;
  
  
• manage change.

How We Are Funded?

We are part of the Human Resources Division, located and funded within Professional Services. Our bespoke activity, where external or additional resources are required to support a development programme, is funded by faculties. We are in receipt of Roberts' monies to support our work developing research staff. Finally we seek external funds from other agencies (government, charities etc.) wherever possible, to further opportunities for staff.

Who Are We?

General Enquiries

Email: od@ucl.ac.uk

An introduction to the team can be found at www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/od/contact

How to find us

The Organisational Development team is located on the 10th floor of 1-19 Torrington Place. We are usually available to answer enquiries between 9am-5pm Monday to Friday (excluding closure days and bank holidays). At other times voice messages can be left on our answerphones.

Postal address:

Organisational Development Team - Human Resources Division,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London,
WC1E 6BT