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Vice-Provost's View: Transforming our Professional Services

26 October 2016

This Vice-Provosts' View reports on progress since May and the establishment of the Transforming our Professional Services programme.

The UCL quad In the May 2016 edition of The Week@UCL, we outlined the results of a review of professional services across UCL that enabled us to benchmark service quality, structures and costs against Russell Group peers. 

Background

UCL has changed dramatically in the past decade. Its global standing has risen and it was ranked first for research power in the UK in the 2014 REF exercise. 

Staff and student numbers have grown rapidly. Student numbers have increased from 20,000 to 38,000 in less than 10 years and our staff numbers have grown from 8,500 to 12,000 in the same period. 

This growth has come through expansion of our departments, schools and institutes as well as by merger, including the School of Pharmacy, three Medical Research Council Units and the Institute of Education.  

Unsurprisingly, the scale, speed and complexity of these changes have had knock-on effects on the ability of our professional services to support our academic mission.

Across UCL, many colleagues are frustrated by the time and effort it takes to get things done. Uncertainty about workflows between local and central professional services, an increase in bureaucracy and workarounds, slow response times and unmanageable workloads frustrate on a daily basis. 

Despite the enormous dedication that colleagues in professional services bring to their roles, the overall delivery of service to academics, students and each other is affected. 

UniForum survey

UCL took the lead by assembling 14 Russell Group universities and appointing Cubane Consulting to conduct the UniForum survey. The survey presents an initial evidence base for planning for improvements by benchmarking UCL's professional service quality, structures and costs against other research intensive universities in the UK and Australia. 

The headlines of the first survey were outlined in the May 2016 update, but briefly they showed that UCL's professional services has unusually complex structures, with a high degree of fragmentation of roles and responsibilities and relatively low levels of satisfaction with services.

A working group was set up to review the outcomes of the survey and identify areas for further consideration. The group consisted of academic and professional services staff from across IOE, SLASH, BEAMS and SLMS, central professional service directorates and Vice-Provosts' offices.

There was wide-ranging discussion within the working group covering how professional services could respond to a modern UCL, deal with present and future demand and improve satisfaction. 

We looked at a number of research-intensive universities in Australia and New Zealand that have been making significant changes to their professional services in recent years and factored the lessons that they learned into our thinking. 

A proposal was submitted to the Provost's Senior Management Team (SMT) and a workshop held to review the recommendations. SMT has subsequently approved the initiation of the 'Transforming our Professional Services' programme.

Transforming our Professional Services (TOPS) programme

TOPS is a two-year programme to improve our professional services across UCL - whether in departments, institutes, faculties or central services. TOPS aims to support UCL's core academic mission by delivering:

  1. higher quality services and a more satisfied UCL community
  2. more fulfilling careers for staff 
  3. over time, a reduction in the proportion of spending on professional services and enabling more investment in the academic mission and improving the student experience 

Over the course of this academic year, we will be engaging with staff and students to capture what is required of our professional services and identify the steps to improve service quality and satisfaction. 

We will begin to address concerns over the lack of career progression for professional services staff; for example, by creating communities of practice for staff who work in similar professional disciplines but in different parts of the university. 

We will also be looking to implement a small number of targeted improvements to test and demonstrate the positive benefits of the TOPS programme. 

In addition, our aim in the first year is to determine a target operating model - an overall design for how our professional services could be structured and what new systems and processes need to be in place in order to improve our services. 

The appropriate model is as yet unknown and will be developed through consultation with staff and students across the university. The following year, 2017/18, will be spent working collectively to implement the agreed model. 

Next steps

As Vice-Provost (Education & Student Affairs) and Vice-Provost (Operations), we will act as joint programme sponsors and will be supported by a programme team. Our key priorities are to finalise the programme plan and engagement strategy. 

We have already captured a number of initial questions and responses on our TOPS website and aim to keep this updated with background information, objectives and specific projects. 

As we develop the programme over the next few months, we expect there to be a number of short-term opportunities for members of the UCL community to support the programme. 

We are committed to keeping you up to date and invite you to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions at tops@ucl.ac.uk

Rex Knight, Vice-Provost (Operations) and Professor Anthony Smith, Vice-Provost (Education & Student Affairs)

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