Building professional services for the future

• The Professional Services Programme is being developed to enhance professional services in response to internal and external drivers and pressures 
• The initial phase will focus on design and planning, engagement and careful alignment with other initiatives
• The programme aims to create resilient, responsive and financially sustainable services that support the University’s core mission into the future

Over the past few years, colleagues across the University have been working hard in line with Professional Services Together to continue to strengthen and enhance our professional services in support of the University’s core mission.

There have been many examples of progress both at a University-wide level and locally in divisions and departments.

Building on this, the Strategic Review of Professional Services made clear what many of us already felt: despite the commitment, skills and expertise across the University, people are not satisfied with some of the professional services they are receiving or delivering.

Internal and external pressures

Many colleagues, in both academic and professional services roles across the University, are working under constant, significant pressures. There are ongoing concerns about how services are managed and delivered across the institution and, overall, we are not delivering professional services as efficiently as we might expect.

As we see regularly in the media, there are also sustained and growing pressures, including significant financial pressure, facing the higher education sector. While in Oxford we are fortunate to be in a stronger position than most, we are not immune to these challenges. Prompt, proactive and joined-up action is essential if we are to sustain our mission and continue investing in the areas that underpin our academic excellence.

In this context, we need to free up the resources and capacity to enable us to continue to make key investments in our ambitious new draft Strategic Plan. This includes investment in our people across all staff groups as we take forward the Pay and Conditions priorities, in our academic facilities and buildings, and in our digital infrastructure through Digital Transformation.

Responding to our challenges

In response to these challenges, I have brought together a group of colleagues from across the University to develop proposals for a collective Professional Services Programme that will play an important role in enabling us to respond effectively to the changing landscape within Oxford, the higher education sector and globally.

A central focus for the programme will be to implement the recommendations of the Strategic Review, which were approved by Council earlier this year.

We will also explore opportunities to make more transformational changes in terms of what we do, how we do it, and where within the University we do it. This includes considering how the growth in the overall cost of delivering our professional services might be sustainably controlled, so that we can invest in our institutional priorities.

The programme will align closely with Digital Transformation, enabling us to make responsible use of technology to increase efficiency and effectiveness, and will work to support our people, more effectively drawing on their skills and capacity and supporting their careers.

In this way there is a real opportunity to not only improve the experience of those providing and receiving our services, but also to upskill and free up the time of professional services staff to enable them to focus on more rewarding and interesting work and remove the burden of many of the transactional tasks and workarounds they currently have to navigate.

Foundational stages

The Professional Services Programme is in a ‘pre-programme’ stage that will run until early 2026. In this time, we will be sourcing ideas from departments, divisions and services, gathering data, testing options and designing the shape of the programme.

This phase of the programme is also supporting and overseeing the initial implementation of the recommendations of the Strategic Review of Professional Services. Progress has already been made on this, with Shared Leadership Groups now established for our People and Finance professional areas and others to follow later in the term. Beyond this, no major changes are expected to be implemented during this pre-programme phase.

The University Council will consider these plans alongside agreeing the 3-year financial Settlement (which sets the level of funding for key University activities) in Hilary term 2026. 

The start of a journey

We are only at the start of the process of developing the programme and – beyond the recommendations of the Strategic Review – it is important to stress that no decisions have been made about the programme and any changes that it might look to implement.

As we consider how our services and ways of working need to evolve for the future, we recognise that both challenges and opportunities lie ahead. We must respond proactively to these challenges and seize the opportunities we can create for ourselves. Colleagues will have the chance to provide input to ensure proposed solutions benefit all parts of the University.

By working together in this way, I believe we can shape professional services that work for all of us, with empowered teams providing responsive, resilient and financially sustainable services that provide the most effective support for academics, researchers and students in support of Oxford’s mission of education and research in the long term.

I will share further updates as the pre-programme phase develops. In the meantime, I encourage you to read the new webpage about the proposed programme, Professional Services Programme | Staff Gateway, and look out for opportunities to get involved.