Organisational Culture and Change

The Organisational Culture and Change family sits within the Human Resources practice area. An example career pathway could take you from Inclusion Coordinator to Head of Culture and Change.

What is Organisational Culture and Change?

Work in organisational culture and change is about making meaningful links between individual behaviour, team dynamics and institutional culture - aligning people, processes and strategy.

At UCL we carry out this work at both institutional and local levels. Our activity can be based centrally (e.g. in HR or Organisational Development) where we work on pan-UCL change, or based within areas in the organisation (e.g. in faculties, departments or VP offices) where the work relates to the specific work area and forms a key part of wider roles (e.g. HR Manager, HR Business Partner), Faculty Manager).

Work can take place at several levels - from strategic, systemic people-related change that impacts across the organization, to focusing on the everyday business of supporting smaller emerging continual change and improvement in distinct areas of responsibility. Within this work we use change frameworks and business cases, and social and behavioural knowledge to underpin our activities, including leadership, group dynamics, process analysis, work design, and building inclusive practice. This work can often take the form of an advisory services to provide advice to individuals or leaders in order to support successful business outcomes, through the different organisational lenses (e.g. Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion, or Health and Wellbeing).

Our work is usually concerned with improving working life for colleagues and making jobs easier and more fulfilling. In this, we understand the development benefits of cross-collaboration and sharing organisational knowledge - breaking down barriers created by ‘norms’ that benefit some but exclude others, creating and promoting peer-learning and networks, communities of practice, mentoring and coaching schemes, and supporting the wider UCL community to successfully contribute to planning and implementing change. It can also involve working on culture and change from a particular perspective like staff who share particular identities such as black and minority ethnic staff and disabled staff.