Key areas for improvement

Key improvements

You told us that you had five principal areas you would like to see improvement in:

• Communications
• Staff involvement and managing change
• Workload and bureaucracy
• Culture and values
• Stress management

All these areas have been turned into an action plan.

The staff survey action plan is available to UCF staff in the downloads section

Communication

The largest single message coming out of the Staff Survey was that you would like to see improved staff communication. You would like to see this improved on a number of levels: within departments, between departments and between departments and senior management.

As only 29% of you agreed or tended to feel communication in the University College is currently effective, this is an area we are taking very seriously. We plan to examine the effectiveness of all our communications at all levels.

As well as the actions outlined in the Staff Survey Action Plan we have committed to four initiatives to assist us to make immediate improvements to our communications as follows:

Staff Communication Focus Groups

In late June 2011 we engaged an independent consultancy team specialising in communications to work with staff focus groups to look at these issues and to understand better your preferred modes of communication as well as your ideas on how to improve communications.

A summary of the results from the focus groups will soon be available in the downloads section.

Communicating across our split campuses

We are not alone in finding the maintenance of good communications across split campuses a real challenge. In addition we recognise neither of our two main campuses currently have an obvious' heart' or focal point. In the summer and autumn of 2011 we have begun and will be holding further open staff meetings, e.g. 'The Estates Strategy and what it means for you' to explain the ways in which our estates strategies at Woodlane and Tremough and our satellite campuses have been specifically designed to better improve staff interaction, cross departmental engagement and social opportunities.

The Estates Strategy will soon be available in the downloads section.

Staff Engagement Group

We plan to establish a free standing group to be known as the Staff Engagement Group. Made up of an independent cross-section of staff, the purpose of this group is to ensure that good ongoing communication and quality consultation are kept at the forefront of our all our activities and plans in the future.

The Staff Engagement Group terms of reference are available in the downloads section

Line manager and individual staff engagement

We believe, and all theories suggest, that the success of communication in an organisation depends on the openness of the relationship between line managers and their direct reports. This is based on the principle that at the 1:1 level everyone should feel they can share their views and influence decisions. This also pre-supposes that information will be carried both up and down from these 1:1 relationships, that wider decisions will be informed by this information and in turn then be collectively owned at each level.

We recognise the survey results showed that overall the majority of you felt that you had a satisfactory relationship with your immediate manager. Despite this given your views about communications, we need to find out if there any breaks in the communication chains that could be improved. Just Tell Us! is a campaign we would like all line managers to engage in over the next three months which, simply put, means carving out a dedicated time to individually ask each and every one of their direct reports; "Am I giving you the information you need, in the right time-frame and in a way that is helpful, honest and involves you?"

More information about the Just Tell Us! campaign is available in the downloads section

Staff involvement and managing change

Supporting staff in a climate of change: We understand that you feel University College Falmouth has been through a period of considerable change. We also recognise and are extremely grateful to all staff for their enormous commitment in making this change happen.

In terms of internal change, UCF is nearing the end of the programme stimulated by the Road Map. This programme built upon UCF's considerable strengths and was designed to prepare UCF so that it could continue to prosper and grow in the face of significant changes and challenges affecting the whole of the UK HE environment.

The new UK HE funding environment and the White Paper means that further external changes are now upon us, which we recognise are likely to create further demands upon all HE staff and mangers. The Staff Survey Action Plan therefore will seek to actively address the impact of continual change in the HE environment upon staff, as well as establishing better ongoing mechanisms to support staff through significant periods of change.

The staff survey action plan is available in the downloads section

Workload and bureaucracy

You told us (14% agree and 26% tend to agree) that you are unable to handle all the conflicting demands on your time at work. This concerns us and we are asking all line managers to review current levels of workload, including work taking place outside of core hours. We also want to be reassured that all line managers are able to have regular planned up-front 1:1 meetings with their direct reports so that individual workload is kept under review. We also believe that this is a vital communication conduit and should be an early warning signal if communications are not being cascaded effectively.

Culture and values

70% of you said that you agreed or tended to agree that you could explain to someone who didn't work here what UCF is trying to achieve and 53% agreed or tended to agree that UCF is moving in a direction you support. The majority of you also felt that you have seen improvements in the last year and that you expect to see further improvements in the next 12 months.

UCF is developing a new Strategic Plan for 2012-17. This plan will set out our ambitions to be a world class specialist multi-arts university, which we hope all staff will want to work in. However, it is important that you want to be part of this journey because this will be UCF's next big step in its evolution from Falmouth College of Arts to a world class arts university. As part of developing this plan, staff will be consulted in the autumn on both our mission, values and direction. We will also consult a range of other internal and external stakeholders.

Stress management

30% of you said that you feel unduly stressed at work (against a median for higher education institutions of 27%). Of those respondents who said they feel unduly stressed, the most cited reasons were work demands, organisational change, workload, and insufficient staff. The action plan is designed to address these specific issues within the ‘staff involvement and managing change' and ‘workload and bureaucracy' sections. The actions in these sections that are designed to respond to the issue of undue stress at work are:

• Evaluation, management and monitoring of parallel changes processes to avoid overload on staff
• UCF to offer more staff development events on the theme of change in HE, tailored to the new funding environment
• Line managers to work with direct reports to identify change-related development/CPD needs for the coming year as part of the PDR process
• Line managers to review current workload levels and availability of required resources with all their direct reports at regular 1:1 meetings in autumn/spring 2011-12, including measurement and monitoring of work taking place outside of core hours
• Management Board to review current levels of overtime across the institution

In addition, the University College has recently received a more detailed report from Capita, the survey organisers, covering the responses from UCF staff against the Health and Safety Executive Stress Management Standards. This report will be referred to the Health and Safety Committee (a sub-committee of Management Board) for detailed analysis, and a specific action plan.

Further information

If you want to know more about the 2011 staff survey, or wish to comment or make suggestions, please email: staffsurvey@falmouth.ac.uk