[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
Today (Monday, 1 November) marks a significant step as the Directorate of Human Resources changes its name to the Directorate of People and Organisational Development (which may be shortened to People and OD, but please not POD!)<\/p>\n
So why a name change and why now?\u00a0 In many organisations, HR is a support function, concerned with the efficient management of the employment process.\u00a0 Whilst carrying out the day-to-day transactional work is \u2013 and will continue to be \u2013 very important, it is only half the story.<\/p>\n
Organisational development (OD) is much more about helping people and the places they work to grow and flourish, to adapt and prosper, to be inclusive.\u00a0 It\u2019s about enabling positive change by creating an employee experience that helps us attract and retain the very best people.\u00a0 It\u2019s about ensuring the kind of culture is in place to maximise everyone\u2019s potential and understand what and how they contribute to our University\u2019s vision and mission.\u00a0 It\u2019s about working alongside Faculties and Professional Services to be the best version of ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The work we do going forward will be essential to delivering the \u2018Our People Our Values\u2019 theme which lies at the heart of our University\u2019s strategic plan Our future<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simply put, we will deliver outstanding service to colleagues. We will lead initiatives which ensure a first-class employee experience for all.\u00a0 We will work to enhance Manchester\u2019s reputation as a great and inclusive place to work, a place where all colleagues can thrive professionally and where wellbeing is at the top of our agenda. By working collectively towards our shared goals, we will achieve great things together.<\/p>\n Over the coming months people from across our University community will be invited to get involved in developing our new People and OD strategy which will be our blueprint for the future.<\/p>\n What<\/strong> we deliver for our University is, however, just part of the story.\u00a0 How <\/strong>we deliver our service is critical.\u00a0 Through our work we will bring our University\u2019s values to life, demonstrating knowledge, wisdom, humanity, academic freedom, courage and pioneering spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Importantly, we will lead the way in shifting Manchester\u2019s culture to one in which trust and kindness underpin everything that we do.\u00a0 In Stephen Covey\u2019s words from his book, \u2018Move with the speed of trust\u2019<\/em>: \u201cThe simple, often overlooked fact is this:\u00a0work gets done with and through people. There\u2019s nothing more impactful on people, their work, and their performance,\u00a0than trust.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kindness, a combination of being friendly, generous and considerate, can literally move mountains.\u00a0 Being kind in the workplace strengthens relationships and satisfaction and makes work more enjoyable and meaningful.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the moment colleagues from across the University are being asked to contribute ideas to reduce time pressures and I\u2019d invite you to send your thoughts to staffsurvey-reducingtimepressures@manchester.ac.uk<\/a> before 12 November.<\/p>\n In addition, I\u2019ve invited colleagues from across our Directorate to send my leadership team their ideas for short-term changes and innovations which we can put into practice quickly to help us all work more efficiently and effectively.\u00a0 If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, please do post them in the comments below.\u00a0 Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to working with you over the coming months.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/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":" Today (Monday, 1 November) marks a significant step as the Directorate of Human Resources changes its name to the Directorate of People and Organisational Development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":3583,"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-3541","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\/3541","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=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3585,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions\/3585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Related<\/h1>\n
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Stephanie Lee: Removing barriers and boundaries to learning<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Hannah Rundle: It\u2019s not what we do, but how we do it: SEP \u201cHow We Work Together\u201d principles<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Patrick Hackett and Beth Dodd - Emerging from a crisis<\/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>