Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

Schools Planning Framework for Academic Leaders

The Schools Planning Framework project funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, seeks to explore the development of a practical application of a performance management tool, aimed at academic units. The report sets out the findings of the project as a case study based at the University of Lincoln.

Academic Career Frameworks: Key to Change?

Bournemouth University’s new career frameworks for academics are the subject of a longitudinal study funded by the Innovation and Transformation Fund. Here is a report from 2015 setting out the findings gathered to date.

Developing the next generation – Brunel University

A guidance and good practice resource for the leadership development of early career researchers and academics, based on a research project funded by the Leadership Foundation's Innovation and Transformation Fund.

Evidencing the benefits of a business improvement project from the start

Following the launch of the University of Strathclyde's Guide to Evidencing the Benefits of Business Process Improvement in July 2015, Nicola Cairns shares an example of how this approach can be seamlessly integrated into existing business improvement projects.

Development of an Academic Intern Scheme

This project will develop a professional development scheme for postgraduates interested in an academic career. This intern scheme is designed to offer an innovative and inclusive way to expose postgraduate taught and research students to wider academic skills, practices and processes, whilst providing an opportunity to see the workings of a higher education institution.

Engagement driven approach to process improvement – University of Hertfordshire

This report describes a project to develop an approach to process improvement within Higher Education that focuses on people, acknowledges their different perspectives and uses these perspectives to enhance capability.

Putting Students at the Heart of Our Processes – University of Leicester

This report is a guide to the University of Leicester's exploration into whether connecting senior leaders more closely to the student experience created an impetus for organisational improvement. It contains information on “what works” in engaging senior leaders and seeks to provide insights for institutions looking to develop similar approaches.

Participative Process Review – toolkit

The process reviews developed by Oxford Brookes have been specifically designed to enable teams to subsequently self-facilitate further reviews. This toolkit introduces the concept of carrying out process reviews to professionals working in higher education.

A guide to evidencing the benefits of business process improvement – University of Strathclyde

This guide describes how higher education institutions can evidence benefits of business process improvement. It outlines how to quantify benefits throughout a typical project life-cycle for process redesign / process modelling activities and demonstrates how to gather, record and communicate the information to allow for more accurate reporting of a project's impact.

Shared services – Jisc shared data centre – case study – June 2015

Jisc has joined forces with Infinity SDC and six anchor tenants to provide a shared data centre for research and education. Potential benefits significant cost savings through aggregating requirements across tenants.