The University’s Inspiring People: Changing the World strategy is the result of more than 100 hours of consultation events which engaged with more than 1,000 members of staff. The strategy sets out our vision to be a world-class, world-changing university – an ambition that requires a step-change in our culture and the way we work together.

The consultation events identified a number of actions we could take to move the University closer to our vision. These proposals broadly fell into three workstreams – Focus, Agility and Empowering People. Last week's edition of Campus e-News saw a spotlight on Focus, and this week we look at the activities of the Agility workstream.

Agility was established to streamline the way we work to free up staff time, finance and other resources. Work in the Agility stream is overseen by Professor Frank Coton, Vice Principal for Academic and Educational Innovation, and Robert Fraser, Director of Finance.

Watch Robert Fraser outlining the thinking behind Agility

mp4 video

In the past, staff and students have complained that university processes are inefficient and constraining, limiting our ability to react to the fast-moving higher education environment. Agility seeks to address this by leading major reforms of university processes – stripping back unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, duplication and approval to create a more agile operating culture.

Since the launch of the strategy, Agility has been heavily focused on mapping out the major university processes and the systems that support these. Thanks to this mapping exercise, university staff have a comprehensive overview of the number of processes we have, the systems they depend upon and roles and responsibilities for the first time in our history.

Having carried out this mapping process, the next step for the Agility workstream is to carry out an extensive top-to-bottom process of reform surrounding one of the University’s major processes. More details of the process chosen and the opportunities for staff to get involved in the reform efforts will be announced in due course.

The result of this process re-engineering exercise should be less layers of authorisation to navigate, fewer cumbersome system workarounds, and more time and resource for staff to devote to other things – a world-class university run upon world-class practice.

If you have a story of positive change or innovation on any scale you would like to share on the Inspiring Change Success Stories pages , then please do get in touch. Remember, there are also continuous opportunities available to offer further feedback and be a part of the on-going conversation. You can visit our Get Involved page to find out how!

First published: 10 October 2016

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