[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”on” _builder_version=”3.17.6″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″ specialty_columns=”4″][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column_inner type=”4_4″ saved_specialty_column_type=”2_3″][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=”3.17.6″ featured_placement=”above” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.6″]<\/p>\n
Jonathan Winter, Head of Staff Learning and Development, shares some of the opportunities available to staff for continuing their professional and personal development.<\/strong><\/p>\n We are living through changes that few of us saw coming and even fewer were prepared for.<\/p>\n So much has changed in such a short time and the way that each individual experiences and reacts to these changes is vast. Above all, this is a time of terrible suffering for the bereaved and the sick. To a greater or lesser degree all our lives have been affected and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. <\/p>\n For the first time in my life I feel I could ask anyone if they have learned anything new in the past few weeks and the answer would be 100% \u201cYes\u201d. Those in employment are highly likely to have acquired new knowledge, skills or experiences both personally and professionally. Many speak of positive things they have learned, ranging from finding out who their neighbours are and how they can help each other, to learning about (or rediscovering) their personal strengths and those of others.<\/p>\n To say we are learning is to say we are adapting to our changing circumstances. That capacity for adaptation and learning has been present throughout human history. It\u2019s why we are still here and why we will find a way to bring the current health and economic crises under control. <\/p>\n Some of our University colleagues have vital specialist skills and roles that enables them to contribute directly to understanding how to manage Coronavirus and its impact locally, nationally and globally<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most of us have a less direct professional link to overcoming the current challenges, but we all play a role in the University\u2019s success by keeping learning and adapting to become ever better at what we do. <\/p>\n It is well known that when we learn new things, our brains are more ready to process and act on further new learning. So this is a really good time to focus on what you could learn that would be of greatest benefit to you and possibly others too. <\/p>\n Some people are finding the opportunity in the lockdown to reflect on the role they do and how they might like to change their working lives, either through a different role or a new approach to their current role. We offer lots of career development advice and guidance on Staffnet<\/a>.<\/p>\n We are hugely fortunate to be part of an organisation that understands the value of learning for its staff as well as its students, so we continue to benefit from a really broad range of opportunities to learn something new or build further on existing strengths. The Staff Learning and Development team have been busy reinventing many of our previously face to face development activities as online versions that you can use from home on any device with internet access. <\/p>\n The starting point, given the breadth of choice of learning opportunities, is to create a prioritised plan for your learning. It may be that you have one from a previous Performance and Development Review (P&DR), though this might be out of date or in need of updating given our collective change in circumstances. There is clear, concise guidance on how to decide on a Personal Development Plan<\/a> (PDP). Wherever possible you should discuss your PDP with your manager to see if they have any comments or can offer additional ideas or support. <\/p>\n Do remember that the PDP approach is just as useful for non-work or broader career aims that you would like to fulfil. <\/p>\n If you are currently furloughed you are allowed and indeed encouraged to invest some time in your professional development if your circumstances allow. <\/p>\n Once you know what type of development you are seeking, then you will almost certainly find the solution in our Staff Learning and Development area<\/a> in StaffNet. <\/p>\n We have quickly got into our stride with delivery of live sessions to groups of colleagues via Zoom. Did you know that Zoom has many of the features of a development workshop built into its technology including break-out groups and shared interactive whiteboards? In March we didn\u2019t know that either but by April we were experts!<\/p>\n It is not unheard of now for us to be running three live group development sessions at the same time and we have had great levels of active participation from colleagues all around the University \u2013 thank you all!<\/p>\n Positive feedback from participants is suggesting that the learning experience has been as good as when it takes place in the training room. People have also told us how good it feels to still be taking part in professional development when so many other things have had to stop.<\/p>\n An external facilitator who was involved in one of our recent sessions described the University\u2019s staff learning and development opportunities as \u201cstreets ahead\u201d of what other organisations are currently offering, so please do make the most of this valuable benefit of being part of the University.<\/p>\n Whilst many development needs can be met with \u2018off the shelf\u2019 resources, lots of others need to be tailored to local requirements and challenges. In these situations you can contact us to discuss possible help with creating a bespoke intervention. To start that conversation (or for anything else) please email staffld@manchester.ac.uk<\/a> and we will put you in touch with someone whose role it is to support learning and organisation development in your part of the University.<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s acknowledge that there is a great deal of uncertainty in our current situation and the need to be patient while things become clearer, but this does not need to stop us from progressing our learning. This reminded one of our team of something Martin Luther King Jr. said: <\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”3.17.6″ prev_text=”Previous” next_text=”Next” in_same_term=”off” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=”3.17.6″ custom_button=”on” button_text_color=”#ffffff” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Related posts” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ locked=”on”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=”Subscribe” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”et_pb_widget_area_3″ locked=”on” \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”sidebar-1″ show_border=”off” locked=”on” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time in my life I feel I could ask anyone if they have learned anything new in the past few weeks and the answer would be 100% \u201cYes\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":3374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" [et_pb_section bb_built=\"1\" fullwidth=\"off\" specialty=\"on\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"][et_pb_column type=\"2_3\" specialty_columns=\"4\"][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=\"Row\"][et_pb_column_inner type=\"4_4\" saved_specialty_column_type=\"2_3\"][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" featured_placement=\"above\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"]<\/p> When I\u2019m out and about meeting staff I hear much debate about the why, what, when and how of change in our University. I wanted to share my thoughts on this often contentious topic \u2013 and hear your views too.<\/p> Early in 2020 we will launch our University\u2019s new vision and strategic plan \u2013 Our future. In order to fulfil Our future we need to ensure that we are in a financially sustainable position so that we have the funds to invest in the new staff, facilities and infrastructure which will be needed to bring our plans to life.<\/p> Our Financial Statements<\/a> for 2018\/19, which have been published following approval by the Board of Governors, confirm that more than 95% of our \u00a31.1bn income is spent on our core goals - on our staff and our students - to deliver research, education and social responsibility; with the remainder invested in the long term sustainability of our University. You can find a summary<\/a> of the Financial Statements on StaffNet.<\/p> However, this is a testing time for UK universities, due to the many external factors that have an impact on us - current home tuition fees are falling in real terms, whilst our costs (not just pay but non-pay too) are increasing. There are further and even greater tuition fee funding risks outlined in General Election manifestos as well as a range of Brexit-related risks that could affect our operations. The Office for Students (OfS) demands that we demonstrate both value for money for our students and our financial sustainability (in the sense of being able to invest to deliver our ambitious strategy, rather than survival). There are, of course, also ongoing unresolved national issues around pay and the continuing challenges around funding pensions in the higher education sector.<\/p> Our Financial Statements show an improved operating surplus (3.7% of income compared to \u00a324.7m (2.3%) in 2017\/18), with a rise in income from tuition fees, education contracts and research. As I mentioned earlier, we re-invest the surplus we achieve each year in activity in line with our strategy. Recently our funds have been used to create some new academic and Professional Services posts; to invest in key infrastructure including IT; to invest in some new buildings like our student accommodation at Unsworth Park; to improve the student experience by funding more full-time Residential Life staff and to upgrade a range of buildings and research and teaching spaces and resources. Increasingly it is also invested in environmental sustainability and meeting our ambitious carbon targets. So even when we are making difficult decisions in some parts of the University we continue to invest our surplus.<\/p> Whilst we have reported an operating surplus, our Board of Governors expects us to deliver a much larger surplus than this (at least 5%) if we are to be sustainable in the long-term. Our strategic change programme (including IT Modernisation<\/a>, the Student Experience Programme<\/a>, and the Research Lifecycle Programme<\/a>), alongside our continuous improvement plans, will ensure that we create the financial headroom to invest in people and facilities. The strategic change programme will also enable us to embrace new technologies and new ways of doing things that better support all our staff and students to be the best that they can be.<\/p> Yes, this means that some individual roles will change. New roles (some that we haven\u2019t yet identified) will be created and some roles will no longer be required. I appreciate that this will cause some uncertainty and where that is the case we will do everything we can to support staff, but the alternative is that we never change anything. If we fail to take advantage of advances in technology and develop more joined-up ways of working we will ultimately find ourselves outdated in the eyes of future students, funders and other stakeholders. Staff want to work for a progressive and successful institution, of which they can be proud. This means we cannot stand still.<\/p> When I talk to staff and students I often hear their frustrations about how difficult it be can be to get some straightforward things done, grappling with paper-based, manual and repetitive processes, on outdated systems and infrastructure, all of which serves to increase staff workloads. Everyone wants to do a good job, but regularly feel that our world-class status is earned in spite of our internal systems and processes, not because of them.<\/p> To deliver our new vision and strategic plan we will need to embrace new opportunities and face challenges with courage and determination. That will sometimes mean we have to make tough decisions and no-one is claiming it will be easy or that mistakes will not be made along the way. But where we do have tough choices to make we will commit to implementing changes fairly and with compassion to support the wellbeing of all our colleagues.<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" prev_text=\"Previous\" next_text=\"Next\" in_same_term=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" custom_button=\"on\" button_text_color=\"#ffffff\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Related posts\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" locked=\"on\"]<\/p> [related-posts-thumbnails]<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_3\"][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=\"Subscribe\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"et_pb_widget_area_3\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"sidebar-1\" show_border=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pslt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3238"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3379,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions\/3379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Related<\/h1>\n
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Patrick Hackett and Beth Dodd - Emerging from a crisis<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Clive Agnew and Simon Merrywest: NSS results<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Karen Heaton: Flexible futures<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/div>
Improving our financial performance will help to deliver our ambitious future plans, but we must also increase our capacity to create the funds and time to invest in our core goals. One of the ways we can do this is by changing what we do and how we do things.<\/p>Related<\/h1>