Three years evolving together

• The Registrar reflects on the progress of Professional Services Together and the achievements of colleagues and teams across the University 
• She looks to the future following the approval of the recommendations of the Strategic Review of Professional Services 

Happy third birthday to Professional Services Together.

When we launched in 2022 we had a clear aim: ensure our professional services support our core mission across every part of the University – focusing of the key areas of people, quality and collaboration to make things better for everyone.

Progress to date

I’m so proud of how much we’ve collectively achieved since, and I’d like to share just a flavour of our progress:

People: Our people are at the heart of providing excellence services, and we’ve really focused on their support and development. For example, we’ve built the Confident Manager series to equip managers with the tools they need – with numbers of course attendees trebling in the last academic year alone. We have also focused on building our professional communities. There are now over 40 communities supporting knowledge exchange, providing resources and running events designed to support our colleagues’ professional lives. As just one example, the new EDI Community of Practice recently ran a 2-day training conference providing targeted development opportunities; overall, 83% of professional community members feel being part of a community has made a positive difference to their work.

Quality: We’ve also focused on service quality, through a variety of Continuous Improvement (CI) open access tools, courses and training, alongside our University-wide service reviews. We now have a network of over 75 trained CI Associate Practitioners across the University helping teams, departments and divisions to take small steps to long-term sustainable change. We know that adopting CI approaches can be transformative. For example, the HR Systems team saved 38.4 days per year by using CI tools to review their HESA staff data return process.

Collaboration: It has been heartening just how much collaboration we are seeing across different parts of Oxford. For example, a new MPLS finance cluster brings together finance teams in 3 departments to improve support and staff development; while NDORMS and Paediatrics in Medical Sciences carried out a combined service review of their HR teams – enhancing their services as well as improving wellbeing and job satisfaction. There are many more examples of this collaboration in other parts of the University too, highlighting the benefits that colleagues now see in working together.

There are so many more stories of success, and there is not enough room in this blog – which is why we’ve created these anniversary webpages, where you can find many more examples of our progress.

In addition to these specific examples, Professional Services Together is also permeating our broader work across the University, and is embedded in wider initiatives – including the People Strategy, Digital Transformation and EveryDaySafe – increasing the impact we’re having.

When I speak to academic colleagues, many of them tell me they have noticed the benefits our efforts; and when we last asked, 84% of professional services staff said they felt that Professional Services Together is making a positive difference, highlighting the progress we have made together.  

Continuing to evolve together

While I am proud of what we’ve achieved, our work is far from complete.

In the year ahead we will continue with many of the activities outlined above, building on what we have learned so far. We’ll also carry on implementing the recommendations of recent service reviews, making improvements to areas such as information compliance and research finance activities.

These incremental changes are critical. However, we know it’s not quite enough to provide the support that our organisation needs across the board.

That is why we’re starting to implement the recommendations of the Strategic Review of Professional Services, which was approved by Council in February of this year.

The Strategic Review builds on the learnings of Professional Services Together – allowing us to take a more strategic approach to delivering services, with common frameworks and principles along with stronger governance and oversight.

One of the first things you will start to notice is Shared Leadership Groups, which will bring together colleagues from departments, divisions and UAS to support effective planning and coordinate change and staff development across end-to-end services.

We’ll also be embedding shared principles into key change programmes, including the People and Finance Service Transformation and Digital Transformation initiatives – ensuring we are pulling in the same direction.

Thank you

We will be providing more updates on the Strategic Review implementation in the months ahead.

In the meantime, I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ for all you’ve done to help us improve services across the University in line with our shared ambitions.

I’m delighted to see the ways in which people are working together, and truly believe that our next essential steps will make us even stronger in pursuit of our mission.