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6.11.2013
PAPER N.2.5
Author
Deadline for submission to Clerk
Date received by Clerk
Title of Paper/report - Annual Report against the 2012-13 University Development Priorities
1. Purpose
This annual report has been prepared to outline the progress made against the 2012-13 University
Development Priorities which were approved by CEG in July 2012. The report also provides a general
update on the quantity and quality of development provided to staff.
2. Synopsis
There have been slightly less staff development events than last year as the Technical Staff Conference
was on a smaller scale than previous staff conferences and future leadership development has been
embedded into our programme of events. We have also seen a drop in demand for the wellbeing
programme of events particularly those relating to supporting staff through change offered as part of the
Agile reorganisation. Progress has been made against all of the University Staff Development Priorities
and collaborations between colleagues involved in staff development have increased.
3. Risk analysis
There are a number of risks affecting the ability to deliver cost effective development and to provide
reliable, comprehensive data where required. These include availability of facilities, levels of nonattendance and arrangements for training records. These risks and mitigating actions are in Section 5 –
Focus for 2013-14
4. Recommendations
Note report
Report against the 2012-13 development priorities
1.0 Background
This report has been written to allow the full extent of the internal development provision against the
2012-13 development priorities to be seen in one place. It has been compiled with input from a range of
departments across the University including: Human Resources, Learning and Teaching Institute,
Occupational Health and Safety, Equality Office, Enterprise and Business Development.
The work of each of these contributing departments extends beyond the information provided in this
report and may also be reported on by separate departmental reports.
2.0 Executive summary
There has been progress against all of the University Development Priorities this year, and enhanced
collaborations between the University departments providing development for staff. The Technical Staff
Conference and the Graduate Employment Scheme and many other events delivered this year involved
successful partnerships between departments and contributions from colleagues.
The overall number of attendees fell, which is in part due to a smaller conference in 12-13 than 11-12, a
reduction in demand for some events and an increase in no-show rates. The quality of provision
remains rated very highly.
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There has been good progress across all areas within the priorities. A particular focus within success
for our students has been BME student success and progress with the Graduate Attributes. Commercial
success has combined a focus on softer skills such as networking with practical support for bid writing
as well as looking to enhance management and leadership skills within the research community.
A particular focus under success for our staff has been supporting the technical staff community and
new academic line managers both of which emerged as priority areas through the Agile reorganisation.
Bringing software training inhouse has been a particular success in making progress under the effective
and efficient ways of working priority. In addition the increased need to understand the broader impact
of data and technology has been covered in new development sessions covering MOOCs and Key
Information Set requirements.
3.0 Overall Summary of training provision
The training provision covered by this report includes:



Centrally administered events and workshops
Targeted or bespoke sessions organised locally
Completion of online training modules
3.1 Quantity
Slightly fewer events have been delivered in 2012-13 compared to 2011-12. Some of the extra events
during 2011-12 were to support the Agile reorganisation and the Wellbeing programme, so there was
less demand for these during 2012-13.
Table 1. Centrally administered events or workshops (booked through Studynet)
Number of events run
365 Events
Change compared to
last year
Number of Participants
attending
Change compared to
last year
- 48 events
4111 participants
- 790 participants
Table 2. Targeted or bespoke sessions organised locally
In addition to the scheduled training above 2364 participants attended 166 other events provided by
specialist departments at University of Hertfordshire, this breaks down as follows:
Department
Number of participants
Number of events
Research
40
40
GTR
800
60
Learning and Teaching Institute
1112
35
Health and Safety
297
21
Human Resources
115
10
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Online training modules
The breakdown of online training usage is as follows:
Overall on-line training
users 2012-13
Change compare to
last year
Health and Safety
module users 2012-13
Equality and diversity
module 2012-13
671 users
+ 110 users
318 users
352 users
3.2 Quality
The results from our on-line evaluations continue to show that the quality of the whole development
provision is high.
Results from the Online evaluations:
 99% of workshops had the Course Content rated as Excellent or Good
 99% of workshops had the Quality of Presentation rated as Excellent or Good
 98% of workshops had the Course Format rated as Excellent or Good
For most of the bespoke events, LTI did not utilise formal evaluation methods, however we received
very positive informal feedback from the events.
3.3 Accessibility
Staff from all departments across the University attended development events this year. Chart 1 below
shows the number of staff attending from each department.
Non-attendance on events, either late cancellations (less than 10 day’s notice) or not attending without
notice has increased from 7% to 16%. Chart 2 shows the non-attendance and late cancellations by
department. The impact of non-attendance is wastage in terms of unused catering and materials and
preventing other members of staff from attending events where there is a waiting list. Raising managers’
awareness of the non-attendance from their areas by reporting the figures to them has had a positive
impact.
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Chart 1 - Attendance
Attendees
Students Union
Physics Astronomy and Maths
Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Office of the CIO
Not Identified
Marketing and Communications
Life and Medical Science
Law
Humanities
Human Resources
Hertfordshire Sports Village
Hertfordshire Business School
Health and Social Work
Finance
Estates Hospitality and Contract Services
Enterprise and Business Development
Engineering and Technology
Education
Dean of Students Office
Creative Arts
Computer Science
Academic Registry
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
N.B. Not Identified - relates to participants at events who are not recorded on the HR System.
These may include contractors etc.
400
450
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Chart 2 – Non-Attendance
Non-attendance Numbers
Students Union
Physics, Astronomy and Maths
Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Office of the CIO
Not identified
Marketing and Communication
Life and Medical Sciences
Law
Humanities
Human Resources
Herts Sports Village
Hertfordshire International college
Hertfordshire Business School
Health and Social Work
Finance department
Estates Hospitality and Contract Services
Enterprise and business development
Engineering and Technology
Education
Dean of students office
Creative Arts
Computer Science
Academic Registry
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
N.B. Not Identified - relates to participants at events who are not recorded on the HR System. These may include
contractors etc.
4. 0 Progress on key priorities
Success for our students
The University hosted a SaHOOTS (Students at the Heart Of Our and Their System) event that was
supported by the Staff Development Forum which was well attended and included representatives of
other regional H.E. Institutes.
We increased our workshop provision on assessment and feedback and continued our support of
flexible learning practice.
Work on BME student success was a key focus this year and LTI worked closely with the Head of
Equality and the Students’ Union. LTI ran a number of workshops for Schools and SBUs regarding the
attainment gap between white and black; minority ethnic (BME) students. Through bespoke workshops
for Schools and Professional SBUs plus the annual learning and teaching conference this crucial topic
has been discussed with over 500 members of staff.
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Continuing the support of the promotion and implementation of the graduate attributes a bespoke
workshop for the Law School was run as well as discussing the attributes with Professional SBUs
including Information Hertfordshire and Human Resources.
The relatively low attendance of our workshops designed specifically for experienced members of staff
to help them refresh their practice and consider how to maximise student engagement within the
classroom was a disappointment. It is hoped attendance will improve for 2013-14 particularly in light of
the low NSS scores.
Commercial success
There is now a strong Marketing strategy in place for research staff with courses advertised using a
variety of methods including Directors of the three Research Institutes, Associates Deans Research,
and the Events for Researchers leaflet to name just a few methods. All courses were mapped to the
Researcher Development Framework. Networking sessions proved popular and gave researchers the
opportunity to meet new colleagues from across the University, discuss research interests and
collaboration possibilities.
Workshops have been run on Networking, Commercial bid writing and marketing for the Enterprise and
Business Development. Staffnet pages are being developed along a similar theme to the Research
Grants Office with a landing page specific to Commercial development activity. The newly established
Business Development Team held a series of informal networking events to promote the opening of the
new Business Development Office, LC204, College Lane Campus.
A successful pilot management development programme for Research Leaders was run Dr Kevin Flinn
and Dr Rodney Day. This has resulted in a new short programme called Research Leader Development
which will be run in late 2013.
Success for our staff
The Technical Staff conference was attended by 44 technical staff from across the University. The
theme of the conference was ‘Building a Technical Staff Forum’ and briefings were provided by
colleagues from key functions across the University.
We have supported our first set of graduate students on the Graduate Employment Scheme and
pleased to report that out of those whose fixed term contracts have already completed, 100% of them
have already secured further employment. This scheme is another example of cross collaboration
across the University to deliver a variety of key workshops not only to the graduates but also wider staff
members. “The Student Experience” and “The Higher Education Sector and the Structure at UH”
provide opportunity for staff to learn more about the context within which they work. Being non-role
specific they offer broad networking opportunities and were repeated due to the high interest from staff.
A comprehensive programme of development has been delivered to academic staff taking on line
management responsibilities as a result of the Agile reorganisation. This is aimed at supporting those
staff in carrying out those duties and improving the employment experience of the staff reporting to
them.
Effective and efficient organisation
The focus this year has been supporting staff to develop internal and external networks, understand the
broader context in which UH operates and helping staff to use technology effectively as an enabler in
their role.
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In very early September 2013 LTI held a Quality assurance and quality enhancement discussion
meeting which was an external event. The meeting considered quality assurance issues associated with
MOOCs and considered the impact on technology enhanced learning of the Key Information Set (KIS)
requirements. 17 members of staff from the University attended the event.
The software training provision has been reformatted in response to changing business needs. Training
has been brought ‘In-House’ delivering short sessions which are Role/Function specific, delivered
frequently and are accessible locally. The focused has been on the delivery of the fundamental
functions with Excel; Word; Outlook and PowerPoint. Bespoke training has also been arranged for
several user groups and Schools.
In addition to the taught courses the IT development pages on StaffNet also provide useful links to free
online tutorials and guides.
5.0 Focus for 2013-14
The development priorities for 2013-14 have been established and were agreed at CEG in July 2013.
The Business Development Team has plans to open a new Business Development Office on the De
Havilland Campus.
The development providers group are committed to delivering against the priorities outlined in the 201314 priorities and providing the University with the development related support it needs to progress and
succeed. The University development providers continue to meet regularly to plan delivery against these
priorities, review progress and discuss opportunities to work collaboratively. In addition there are a
number of risks that the group have concerns about and will be looking to take forward over the 12-13
academic year.
Candidate cancellations – there is a growing concern about an increasing number of cancellations and
difficulty filling some events particularly those running over a full day. Whilst in a number of cases this
will only carry an opportunity cost, in other instances there may be committed costs either for catering or
consultant fees. The provider’s group are taking various actions to minimise this wastage including
considering the length of sessions, how they are marketed and raising awareness amongst SBU heads
of the level of non-attendance from their staff.
Room availability - the development providers are experiencing an increasing challenge finding
suitable, available and bookable rooms to meet the programme of staff development events/workshops.
This is particularly felt in relation to computer room facilities with a staff network. There is currently only
1 room that offers facilities to run training requiring access to the staff network which is causing
scheduling issues to match room, facilitator and staff availability and allow sufficient time to market
events. The omission of required software on PCs in the computer suite caused difficulties at the
beginning of the academic year and the maintenance and updating of software is a continuing
challenge. This will be monitored as it could impact on the future success for delivery of workshops and
development support for staff and may lead to discussions about the need for a second staff networked
PC lab.
Timetabling challenges – the introduction of the new timetabling system has caused a number of small
challenges including being unable to confirm academic staff facilitating workshops due to the lateness of
publication, and fluctuations, of their teaching timetable. Timetable challenges also prevented/delayed
some academic staff in booking onto events as they were unable to confirm their availability for
sessions. It is anticipated that this will settle however it will be kept under review so any mitigating
actions can be identified in a timely manner.
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Training records solution - Since the move from Genesis the University has not had a collated record
of all training and development undertaken across its staff base, Data is extracted from Staffnet showing
who has booked onto internal events and SBU heads were advised at the time that a local record would
need to be kept of locally organised or supported development such as conferences attended or
external training organised and paid for through local budgets. (The integrity of these local records is
unknown) There are a number of reasons why the ability to provide reporting based on a collated set of
data is important and the development administration team are finding that they are unable to fully or
sufficiently meet a number of the requests that are being made.
The development providers group have concerns in relation to the following needs particularly where the
development is likely to have been provided through a mix of internal and external provision (marked*):
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Demonstrating to external bodies the staff development provided to various subsets of staff and
how this has contributed to the enhancement of the student learning experience. In relation to
teaching and learning the LTI provide data on internal event engagement but the ability to
analyse this together with locally (i.e. School organised) and externally attended development is
currently compromised. *
Provision of data increasingly required as part of grant applications and tender bids
demonstrating the commitment the University places on providing development to specific
groups. *
Provision of data for submissions for awards such as Athena Swann or Stonewall. *
Provision of data to Professional or Statutory-Regulatory Bodies requiring details of discipline
specific staff development. Examples provided include Ofsted, British Computer Society (BCS),
Law Society and the Health Professions Council.
Ability to audit mandatory training or recency of training for such things as appraisal, staff
selection training, equality and diversity etc.
Demonstrating that the University meets the expectations outlined in meeting Health and Safety
at Work Act (HSW), the Environmental Permitting Regulations for Radiation. *
ensure staff are qualified for the posts they are holding, this was explicitly referred to in relation
to Nursery, Counselling, HSV and first aiders *
The development providers have concerns about the ability to meet these needs with the current
arrangements due to the unknown integrity of local records, the risks of eroding data integrity by
manipulating data held across a number of excel downloads from StudyNet booking system and also
believe that current arrangements are time intensive.
The development providers will be working to secure a commitment to a more robust and fit for purpose
solution to training records data and reporting through 13-14.
Helen Ellis-Jones
Assistant HR Director
October 2013
On behalf of Development Providers group.