Transforming our People and Finance Services

Renu Gupta, Katherine Gardiner

• The People and Finance Service Transformation (PFST) programme, part of Oxford’s Digital Transformation, is being introduced following staff feedback
• People and Finance services will support staff to adopt shared ways of working, addressing complex issues with processes and policies
• This programme is aligned with the Strategic Review of Professional Services to help the University achieve the Professional Services Together ambitions

People and Finance services touch the lives of every member of our organisation. From applying for a job and monthly payroll, to managing job development and ordering essential research equipment. Every day, we depend on these essential services running seamlessly.

Most of the time, they do – and that’s when you least notice them. However, you’ve shared that sometimes the tasks required to keep your part of the University running smoothly can feel unnecessarily complex. You might find yourself working around certain tasks, avoiding them or spending a lot of time figuring things out.

Staff have told us how frustrating this can be and we often share that frustration. It's increasingly difficult to deal with clunky systems at work when the technology we use in our lives outside work is so intuitive and straightforward.

In recognition of the crucial role that excellent services play in furthering our academic mission, we are delighted to introduce the People and Finance Service Transformation (PFST) programme, part of Oxford’s Digital Transformation, which will tackle these challenges and provide an exciting opportunity to transform how our services operate. While technology plays a crucial role in this journey, it’s about more than just the systems we use. We need to reimagine our ways of working and explore how technology can support us in continuously improving and evolving into the future.

At its heart, this programme is about people. We want everyone to be equipped with the tools they need to do their best work and to thrive, and we want to play our part in creating the sort of environment where brilliant research and excellent teaching can continue to happen. This includes:

• addressing workload issues by reducing waste and duplication;
• providing better data insights for smart decision-making;
• updating our processes to ensure professional skills are kept up to date;
• facilitating stronger relationships between central, divisional, and departmental teams; and
• ensuring everyone’s knowledge and experience are valued.

The PFST programme won’t be easy, but it won’t be like the 'big bang' systems programmes we’ve known in the past. This is the beginning of a new way of working that will allow us to stay current with best practices in HR and Finance and keep up with technological advances. We will need to adopt shared ways of working, addressing complex issues with processes, policies and our work methods. We will aim to make improvements as we go along, through projects such as some already underway, like changes to our Purchasing Hierarchy and the move to a common leave and absence system.

Through this programme we will play our part in enabling the People Strategy and will work in accordance with the recommendations of the Strategic Review of Professional Services to help the University achieve the Professional Services Together ambitions.

Other universities are on this path ahead of us and we are learning from them and from sector experts to plan our journey carefully. We have an opportunity to learn from the best and invest the University’s money wisely in a collective effort to make things better for us all. We’re planning to make the most of it!

The key to our success will be how well we all work together. We will be listening to perspectives of staff from across the University at all stages of the programme.

You can read more on the PFST webpages about focus groups happening this term and how you can get involved.