Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

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.

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.

£14.8m cash efficiency savings for NEUPC members

Following the publication of the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s (NEUPC) annual report, Maria Langham describes the consortium’s recent achievements and how it plans to support universities in their mission to deliver world-class education in the future.

HE Shared Legal – the new shared legal service for UK higher education

HE Shared Legal, the new national shared legal service for the UK higher education sector, is a pilot project borne out of a HEFCE and JISC Advance backed feasibility study conducted in 2010. Since the service was launched on 1 May 2012, it has gained eleven HE subscriber institutions, published more than 170 items of generic guidance, and attended to over 85 individual legal enquiries.

Hefce funds HE Shared Legal VAT cost sharing group project

HE Shared Legal – until recently, a HEFCE-funded pilot project - has made a successful application for a portion of the grant funding offered by HEFCE last year in relation to VAT cost sharing group projects.

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.

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.

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.

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.