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We’re supporting leadership and business partners to design and embed a business partnering model across the university that will help us develop and carry out UCL’s strategic plan for 2022-27.
Business Partners at UCL work across our professional services and VP Offices connecting their services with other departments in the university. They provide strategic functional leadership, help identify business requirements and ensure that services provided are aligned to department’s needs.
The Business Partnering Review aims to:
- Design a fit for purpose and future proof business partnering model for the four core central functions: Finance, Human Resources, Information Services (ISD) and Communications and Marketing (CAM).
- Clarify the scope, operating level and services that business partnering delivers in the four core functions.
- Define and develop the people capabilities needed to strengthen our business partnering services.
Benefits
Through the Business Partnering Review we will:
- Provide a clear career pathway for Business Partners, help them to develop their skills through opportunities for professional development, and equip and empower them to use their skills and experience to support their service.
- Clarify and strengthen the relationships between service providers and clients to enable greater collaboration across functions and services to provide a joined up, future focused service aligned to the needs of the university.
- Provide a refreshed business partner operating model that is clearly understood and appropriately resourced, managed and organized across UCL
- Develop an empowered and equipped specialist resource pool able to adapt as services and strategic priorities change.
Approach
We’re supporting Directors of Operations (DoOs), Deans, Heads of Business Partnering and Business Partners across UCL to review our approach to the service between December 2020 and July 2021 in three phases.
- Phase 1: Discovery – Understanding the current service and exploring principles for the future
In December we began a series of interviews and focus groups with DoOs, Deans, Heads of Business Partnering and Business Partners across UCL to identify issues in our current Business Partnering model and consider the impact these could have on the service. We then explored what an ideal service could look like and agreed with the Vice-President (Operations) Office on three recommendations around which to develop the service:
- Operating model: Clarify the future operating model, producing a clearly articulated and understood picture of our strategic intentions and set out our plan to deliver them through business partnering across UCL.
- Capability: Create a framework of key capabilities that will enable us to implement the operating model and create a career pathway that attracts, develops, and retains exceptional business partnering talent in the future.
- Culture: Strengthen cultural norms around fostering high-trust relationships and collaborative ways of working across UCL.
- Phase 2: Design - Developing the Business Partnering Operating Model
Building on the work in Phase 1 we supported the design of a fit for purpose and future proof business partnering operating model that enables the effective and efficient delivery of UCL wide and faculty objectives. This included developing:
- The case for change – why we need to strengthen our current approach
- Operating model design principles – key aspects we need to consider when developing the new model
- A Business Partnering maturity model – how we measure progress
- A blueprint for the operating model – how we plan to get to the desired operating model
- Phase 3: Supporting implementation and building people capability
We are working closely in partnership with the Directors of Business Partnering across the four core functions to develop implementation plans. These plans will include the approach for putting in place both the operating model and the people capability framework – which will include a career pathway, an induction programme, a development centre programme and a 360 development tool aligned to the business partnering maturity model.
We’ll also work with the community to review and align the objectives of our existing business partnering services, reviewing job descriptions and establishing the core capabilities to be recruited and promoted to for business partnering across UCL.