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Celebrating our award-winning Communities of Practice: Impact Survey results
25 February 2022
Thank you to all staff who completed the Communities of Practice (CoP) Impact Survey 2021. We are now delighted to share the survey results with you.
The insights we gathered in this survey will help influence the direction of UCL's CoP strategy going forward, will help us identify their strengths and points to improve, and influence how we talk about CoPs to our internal and external audiences.
Survey highlights
CoPs bring people together
CoPs help colleagues feel connected to each other and to the whole institution. Nearly all the respondents (92%) agreed that the CoP helped them form connections with colleagues whom they wouldn't have otherwise met – and said that CoPs help improve communication between different areas of UCL (90%).
CoPs help you learn new skills
Most respondents agreed that they have developed their skills and/or gained knowledge about their practice because of their CoP (84%).
They also said that they've been able to apply new skills and knowledge to their job (79%).
CoPs help make UCL a better place to work
Most survey respondents said that being in a CoP increases their sense of belonging at UCL (89%) and that CoPs help improve UCL’s workplace culture (88%).
They also agreed that their team or department benefits from them being in a CoP (83%).
CoPs help improve how things work at UCL
Most survey respondents agreed that their CoP and its outputs help improve service delivery in the practice area (80%), and that their CoP's activities directly benefit UCL (84%).
Celebrating our success
Since 2017 CoPs have hosted around 200 Lunch and Learns and launched around 80 projects to benefit the practice area or UCL.
UCL is also leading the Higher Education sector in CoPs: in 2019, we were awarded the award for best organisational development and culture change initiative at the UHR (Universities Human Resources) Awards for Excellence in HR. In May 2020, UCL hosted a seminar with Etienne Wenger-Trayner, who coined the term ‘Communities of Practice’, and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, who shared their expertise on CoPs and how they operate in online spaces.
The survey also highlighted some things to follow up or improve. Read the full report on Sharepoint:
This survey will be run regularly; the results from 2021 will be used as a benchmark for future surveys.