People Strategy 28
‘
Being you at BNU ’
Transforming lives through inspiring, employment and profession focused education and enabling people positively to impact society and their future.
As a learning organisation, we will enable our staff to flourish, build their expertise and professional practice, and continuously excel and improve BNU’s organisational effectiveness.
Introduction
I am delighted to share the ‘Being you at BNU’ People Strategy which fully supports and underpins Thrive 2028 , the University’s wider strategy.
In the following pages, we set out the targeted people-related actions and interventions that will contribute to the successful delivery of Thrive 28.
By 2028, BNU will be known as a vibrant, inclusive community that inspires learning, develops potential, widens participation and ambitiously transforms lives. We can only achieve this through the valued contributions of our people, and their continued commitment to delivering excellent service to our stakeholders and ensuring that we operate effectively.
Our key performance indicator is for at least 80% of our people to recommend BNU as a great place to work and we anticipate the following actions will enable us to achieve this target.
Along with the HR team, I look forward to working with our people to achieve the objectives and ambitions set out in this strategy.
Rachael Cornwall Director of Human Resources
Strategic Priorities from Thrive FIT AND AGILE ORGANISATION
Thrive 2028 recognises that to compete effectively, much continuing work is needed to transform the way our people are supported, how their work is enabled and governed, and how we deploy management processes to reward and recognise excellence and challenge under-performance. We will continue to embed inclusivity meaningfully in all our practices, ensuring that all staff feel they belong fully to the University’s community. A key ambition is for the work of all our people to be digitally-enabled, so they draw on the best that digital technology has to offer, are equipped with the skills to do so confidently, and always remain safe and secure.
We aim to develop and nurture our workforce by providing a sector-leading focus on the health and wellbeing of our staff. We will reorganise our activity, especially the ways in which work is structured through roles, committees, and working groups, reforming all of these to ensure the talent of our people is developed and their efforts translated into effective action.
Being you at
BNU
Grow and nurture our workforce (GN) and operate effectively (OE)
Health and Wellbeing
We will:
• Adopt the whole university approach set out in and build on the experience of Student Minds’ University Mental Health Charter and Universities UK’s Stepchange: Mentally Healthy Universities;
• Sign, champion and embed the Mental Health at Work Commitment, a framework based on the strong evidencebased Thriving at Work standards;
• Train staff in relation to mental health and stigma, introducing staff Mental Health Champions; and
• Train staff to be Mental Health Peer Supporters, providing peer support to their colleagues in their workplace.
Digital
We will:
• Invest to ensure all our students and staff can draw on the best digital technology has to offer, enabling better and more efficient communications, efficiency, and enhanced functionality.
• Ensure that technologies allow our students and staff to work effectively over distributed temporal and geographical locations.
• Invest in training our students and staff to make the very best of digital technology, equipping them with valuable new skills, and instilling confidence in their use.
• Implement best practice in ensuring our systems, resources, students and staff always remain safe and secure.
Service Excellence
We will:
• Scope and implement a customer service charter across the University.
• Ensure all Schools and Directorates have in place effective arrangements for eliciting and assessing customer feedback and responding effectively.
Reward and Recognition
We will:
• Develop a comprehensive and competitive benefits package for University employees, ensuring we are positioned as an employer of choice within the sector, enhancing our attraction, retention and development of talent;
• Develop and implement a clear framework for recognising and encouraging high performance in the workforce, ensuring this appropriately enables innovation and risk-taking; and
• Establish and implement a clear principlesbased framework for recognition payments.
Inclusivity
We will:
• Ensure that our policies comprehensively embed inclusivity, ensuring that all staff identify with and feel they belong to the University community; and
• Continue to champion inclusivity, working with other organisations as appropriate to address the need for higher education to change in order to meet the needs of disadvantaged and/ or marginalised groups.
Managing for Success
We will:
• Ensure robust, agile, easily understood and easy to operate processes for managing individuals and teams to achieve high standards of performance; and ensure managers are enabled to deploy the full range of tools at their disposal to encourage high performance, and effectively challenge under-performance.
Reformed Roles, Committees and Structures
We will:
• Review and redefine existing and create new role descriptors for all designated roles within the University to ensure empowerment and accountability.
Our People Strategy
Being you at BNU
To enable our people to thrive and achieve the ambitious objectives set out in Thrive 2028 we will ensure that we develop and nurture our workforce and operate effectively.
Our People strategy is positioned under these TWO overarching objectives.
To develop and nurture our workforce
We will:
• Enhance health and wellbeing support to be sector leading.
• Ensure our people are managed for success and managers are equipped with the tools and confidence to deliver this and support their teams.
• Digitally enable our people to operate effectively and in turn, equip our students with skills to make the best of the available technology and confidence to use this.
• Involve and empower our people to embed inclusivity so that Being You at BNU is a reality.
• Improve the experience of our people through advocacy, onboarding, listening and progression.
To operate effectively
We will:
• Reorganise our activity and reform roles to ensure the talent of our people is developed and they are able to take effective action more efficiently.
• Instil and deliver excellent customer service for our whole community.
Our DRIVE values ( Dynamic , Responsible , Inclusive , Visionary , Empowering ) provide a clear framework to guide our people management principles and we will continue to embed these in our processes and procedures. All of our people are expected to act in accordance with DRIVE and to role model the positive behaviours. We continue to expect our people to deliver excellent teaching and a first class service to our students.
1. Enhance Health and Wellbeing
To provide a sector leading focus on the health and wellbeing of our people
We will:
• Sign and embed the mental health at work commitment by ensuring our people have access to a safe space and can signpost to further sources of support.
• Create guidance aligned to the Mental Health Charter to enable and empower managers to provide support and promote the wellbeing of their teams.
• Introduce and train our people to be mental health champions and to provide peer support through 121 meetings; drop in sessions and through our people networks/forum.
• Commit to the principles outlined in the Race Equality Charter and achieve our award.
• Adopt a holistic approach to wellbeing which includes inclusivity and sustainability including the introduction of inclusion passports.
To compete effectively we need to transform the way our people are supported, how their work is enabled and governed, and how we deploy management processes to reward and recognise excellence and challenge under performance.
We will:
• Introduce a staff forum to provide further opportunities for the employee voice to be heard and listened to, ensuring that positive change is implemented. Consider, and where relevant, adopt, suggested ways to enhance the employee experience.
• Equip managers with tools and processes to manage and enhance the performance of their teams, which includes developing manager expectations and KPIs to support delivery of effective people management.
• Deliver our ‘Being a Manager at BNU’ Development programme and ensure that learned behaviours and skills are utilised including the creation of a Manager forum/hub.
• Provide a range of developmental interventions to equip and support managers to encourage high performance and effectively challenge under performance. Embed regular Continued Professional Development (CPD) for all our people.
• Develop a graduate/apprentice intern scheme to support graduate outcomes and employability, growing our own and attracting diverse people into BNU.
• Introduce and embed a structured approach to workforce and succession planning aligned to strategic planning for Schools and Directorates.
• Develop and capitalise on our employer brand – being you at BNU, ensuring we are positioned as an employer of choice by developing and enhancing our benefits package including the introduction of recognition payments.
• Further develop our BNU Behavioural Framework to service as a clear framework to recognise and encourage high performance and support developing performers to transition.
• Introduce further rigour to our recruitment processes to ensure we attract a diverse range of talent and skill. Take meaningful actions to make recruitment more inclusive.
• Introduce our academic workload model to enable parity and manageable workloads across all Schools and Directorates.
2. Manage for Success
3. Digitally enable our people
A key ambition is for the work of all our people to be digitally enabled, to draw on the best that digital technology has to offer and are equipped with the skills to do so confidently remaining safe and secure.
We will:
• Instil confidence in the use of digital technology by developing digital competencies (in partnership with DTS and LTE) and provide training, including the creation of an assessment framework.
• Ensure our recruitment and PDR processes assess digital capability.
• Explore and introduce gamification in Learning and Development and onboarding.
• Adopt digital technologies to facilitate better communication including real time feedback, 121s and PDRs/performance management.
4. Embed and Champion Inclusivity
To meaningfully embed inclusivity in all our practices, ensuring our diverse community feel that they belong and can be themselves.
We will:
• Take action related to the people objectives set out in our Equality Strategy ;
• Involve and empower our community;
• Take action to tackle inequalities;
• Build a University Community where people can be themselves.
See the Equality Strategy for more detail
To reorganise our activity, particularly the way work is structured, to ensure the talent of our people is developed and their efforts translated into effective action more efficiently.
We will:
• Develop meeting effectiveness and ways of working etiquette to improve efficiencies and better support inclusivity and customer service;
• Create new role descriptors for designated roles and ensure new ways of working are embedded to align with the BNU Behavioural Framework ;
• Investigate and consider alternative options for job evaluation and propose next steps, taking action as required; and
• Review our academic and directorate structures to ensure they are agile and support organisational effectiveness.
To enable the delivery of Thrive 28 we must adopt a customer service mindset aligned to our DRIVE Values and BNU Behavioural Framework (BFF) .
We will:
• Implement a customer service charter and ensure all of our people are accountable through our performance review processes;
• Develop a toolkit based on the BBF service excellence standards, enable selfassessment and ensure measurement throughout our people lifecycle; and
• Introduce formal and external customer service accreditation and benchmarking.
5. Reform roles and structures
6. Instil excellent customer service
MEASURES OF SUCCESS
To meet our People KPI ‘80% of staff strongly endorse the University to friends and family as a great place to work’
Improve our Being you at BNU staff survey outcomes
1. Our customers would rate the service we deliver as excellent (baseline 46% in 2022)
2. I’m proud to tell others I work here (baseline 59% in 2022)
3. We have good benefits here (baseline 48% in 2022)
4. My workload is manageable (baseline 38% in 2022)
Improve pay gaps (mean): gender (13.3% in 2022); disability (7.8% in 2022); ethnicity (4.7% in 2022)
Become a Disability Confident Leader
Achieve Race Equality Charter accreditation
Reduce attrition rate of people with less than two years’ service (baseline 23% in 2023)
Ensure all academics have a fair and equitable academic workload model
See improved ratings on Glassdoor (baseline 3.8/5 May 2023)
Vacancies are filled first time (approx 1 in 3 as at July 2023)
Achieve the metrics set out in our Equality Strategy 2028
Increased number of internal promotions from 15% (2023)
Measurable behavioural shift for Managers attending our Being a Manager at BNU programme
Positive responses to ‘I am offered training and development to further myself professionally’ increase from 62%
Digital capability – we make good use of digital media, tools and technology’ baseline 41% (2023)
Increase % of staff with Significant Research Responsibility (REF definition) from 10.5%
No. of people citing lack of career prospects as a reason for leaving decrease from 38% (2023)
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Email: advice@bnu.ac.uk
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