A Case Study of Development following a JISC-Funded project to examine how well Business and Community Engagement (BCE) was embedded within the core business processes of the university
Context
The Embedding Business and Community Engagement through Business Process Review and Internal Engagement project (2008/2009) undertook a series of interviews and workshops to identify both strengths and areas for potential improvement within the context of how Business and Community Engagement work was supported by the core business processes of the organisation, such as HR, Finance, Marketing, IT, Estates and Facilities and Libraries etc.
The outputs of this initial project were a case study of perceptions of people from managers to practitioners within both the core processes and those engaging with businesses and the wider community sectors and a list of potential developmental activities to address issues identified.
This case study follows on from that original activity to document the implementation of developments to further identify good practice and any common issues faced by organisations within the Further and Higher Education sectors seeking to implement cross-institutional development.
When Newcastle University first became partners in the Embedding BCE project the University had recently appointed a new Vice Chancellor who wanted to enhance the University’s reputation of being a Civic University. The University Council created a new role of Pro-Vice Chancellor (PVC) for Engagement. This meant that there were then 7 PVCs reporting to the Vice Chancellor, each with their own remit.
The PVC’s remit was to develop an engagement strategy that would fit in with the University’s strategic vision as set out in its Vision and Mission Document “Vision 2021”.
One of the findings of the Case Study was that we had limited joining up of the various strands of embedding BCE within the University. This was something that the University felt was an issue and a PVC was appointed to address this, one of the first things the PVC was tasked with was the development of an Engagement Strategy. The Strategy was a comprehensive all-encompassing document. Amongst other things it acknowledged the history of engagement at the University and indicated its future importance
“Engagement is not a novel concept at Newcastle University. Rather, this Strategy builds on a rich and -established portfolio of existing engagement practice which provides a sound base for future development. Engagement covers a broad spectrum of activity, ranging from individual contributions through community involvement to major initiatives of global relevance that extend far beyond our city and region. An important underpinning principle is the effective translation and application of our expertise and insights, borne of impactful, engaged work with our communities, in regions throughout the world that face similar challenges.
At the Strategy’s heart is the principle that engagement is an integral, embedded part of our teaching, research and service endeavours, rather than a separate, additional strand of activity. We believe that engagement is recognised as fundamental to our institutional culture: it is part of the way we do things.”
This gives rooting in the University’s vision and mission to the importance of Engagement.
At this point the JISC project was happening, however the PVC was driving Newcastle’s Engagement Strategy development and implementation forward at a huge speed and the two were running parallel and in fact the University development overtook the JISC project outcomes. However it was good to see that the JISC recommendations were very close to the plans of the University.
Shortly after the University developed, agreed and started implementing the Engagement Strategy the PVC for Engagement moved to take up the role of Director of the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability, one of the University’s flagship engagement policies. The University Executive Board then agreed that the remit of Engagement should be included in the portfolio of the newly created Deputy Vice Chancellor (DVC) with effect from January 2011.
Moving responsibility to DVC gives it a higher level of authority as it raises the profile of engagement however there is no dedicated team for engagement and a large amount of engagement work relies on the goodwill of the staff across the University. Whilst the profile is raised it is only part of the remit of the DVC, this means that there could be a series of pauses if other projects are prioritised, conversely by making it part of a wider remit this will lead to Engagement traversing any silos that may have formed. Within the Engagement part of the role the DVC has wider scope to develop strategic partnerships and societal challenge themes. The wider role allows the DVC to coordinate different facets such as Alumni, City, Regional, National and strategic positioning across the whole University.
Prioritisation of Potential Development Work
The priority was to identify what Engagement activity was already happening in order to inform the development of an appropriate strategy. This strategy needed to ensure current activity is supported and embedded in the University culture. In order to identify the engagement activities already being undertaken a University-wide survey was carried out. The aim of this was to capture, analyse and celebrate the rich and varied diversity of engagement activities.
More than 1200 individual submissions were made, from colleagues involved in volunteering or working with communities, disadvantaged minorities, small businesses, ‘hard-to-reach’ groups, those undertaking public service or civic duties, people participating in research of global significance to address society’s problems, or using their expertise to influence and change public policy.
The amount and diversity of activity that was brought to light by the report showed that there was a huge amount of engagement happening in a largely uncoordinated and unrecorded way. Since this was a self selecting survey there may well be a vast amount of engagement activity that is still unaccounted for.
A big risk was that all of this engagement was happening but there was no coordination and recording, therefore something needed to be put into place. The DVC has accepted that it will never be possible to record and coordinate all of the activity in an Institution of this size however recognises the importance of having an awareness of what is happening so that coordination can take place, be built upon and enhanced. Rather than a detailed awareness, the DVC would like a top level strategic knowledge in order to coordinate the development of multiple individual relationships with one organisation into one larger strategic partnership.
One of the benefits of this was that we could market ourselves as a civic University, with case studies and evidence.
A number of key internal enablers to support the translation of strategy into action were identified, including:
- the need for staff to be comfortable that time spent on engagement activity is recognised, and that promotion and career development opportunities are provided. It is therefore essential to agree and develop appropriate criteria to facilitate this.
- structure and roles may need to be amended and reconfigured, for example to establish Deans for Engagement
- the need to create ownership groups amongst management
- the need for all faculties and schools to have an engagement strategy
- the need for all support services (i.e. ISS, HR. Library etc) to develop policies and procedures for supporting Engagement activities
Given the ever increasing pressure on University budgets it was imperative that all the changes were done without any significant costs on top of the appointment of the PVC. The costs of the management structure would have to come from within schools and faculties.
All the proposals would need to be implemented as soon as possible in order to capture the enthusiasm and motivation of the newly appointed PVC role
The Agreed Development to be Implemented
The University has convened a strategy group of 20 members, drawn from across the organisation and involving both people with statutory responsibilities as well as engagement enthusiasts and activists. The role of the group is to debate the issues and consider the direction and strategic priorities and to continually update the strategy to be submitted to the University Senate and Executive. It will advise and propose developments in terms of roles, collaborative working and sustainable approaches.
Currently research activity has a formal model for costing (Pfact) and a process for approval involving Head of School, School Administrators and Central Services. No research can happen without this process being strictly followed. Currently Engagement activities do not have a process to follow and therefore it is much more informal and uncoordinated leading to the problems mentioned earlier such as lack of recognition and recording. It can also lead to complications with contracts, finance and workload allocation models.
One of the starting points to do this was to create a management structure. The PVC suggested that each Faculty should have a Dean for Engagement, and each School should have a Director of Engagement. Similarly each Faculty should have an engagement strategy that ties in with the University strategy, and likewise each School’s strategy should now include Engagement which has to feed into the Faculties’. This Engagement management structure attempted to create an authorisation process similar to that of Research.
Similarly Engagement was to be incorporated into the work of the Central Services. For example HR updated their promotion policy so that recognition was given to Engagement work undertaken via the criteria for promotion for academic staff. For example for promotion to Senior Lecturer one of the four criteria is as follows:
“Major achievements in income generation, or major contributions to other engagement activities”
Similarly for promotion to a Chair, Engagement is one of three criteria, sitting alongside Research and Scholarship and Education and Teaching.
In the 2010/11 Workload allocation model procedures the policy was changed so that rather than engagement and development activities being the ‘balance’ research became the ‘balance’. This demonstrated Senior Management placing a higher importance on engagement than previously.
As well as trying to embed Engagement the University also launched a scheme to encourage local civic engagement with charities and SMEs. This scheme involved using some of the VAT savings (from the reduction of VAT from 17.5 to 15%) to part fund projects. The scheme provided up to £5000 per organisation to contribute towards University services such as Leadership and Management Training, bike lock design, assistance with marketing plans as well as a range of other projects. In total there was over £750k worth of business vouchers given away which leveraged over £800k worth of additional income. This had a number of benefits including developing new contacts and business relationships for the University as well as introducing academics, new to Engagement, to the processes and procedures involved in Engagement activities.
In the summer of 2011 the new MyImpact system will be launched which will allow academics and other staff to record Engagement activity alongside their Teaching and Research.
The Authorisation Process
This was not an issue for our University. Priority was given to embedding Engagement and it was not in competition with other areas of development for resourcing. Embedding Engagement was given full support by the Vice Chancellor and the Executive Board as a way of promoting the University as a civic University as well as trying to give a more balanced income stream to the University with the Government’s funding changes. The support was demonstrated through the appointment to a newly created role of PVC for Engagement. In order to promote the agenda across the University and the wider community, the PVC was given the use of the Marketing and Communications Directorate (MCD).
Engagement of Stakeholders
The Marketing and Communications Directorate handled communications before and during implementation of the strategy. Internally the University’s engagement strategy vision and mission were disseminated across the University with the help of Directors of Engagement in each school and Faculty as well as the University’s website. As previously mentioned a Committee was set up to not only manage the Engagement of stakeholders but also to drive the agenda forward. The usual HR channels were used to inform academics about changes to the promotions criteria.
There was some concern by staff regarding this change. As seen above there was over 1200 reported engagement activities already taking place, despite this staff felt that Engagement would be an increase to their workloads, instead of recognising that it was already happening. There was also concern that it would be ‘managed’ therefore taking away the freedom of the informality. There was also difficulty in quantifying Engagement in terms of what is classified as Engagement and whether it should be encouraged if it did not fit in with the engagement strategy and if there were financial implications.
The agenda was promoted externally through the strategic promotion of the University as a Civic University. As part of this process the University undertook a consultation with the local community, students, staff and external stakeholders. This was done to gauge local perceptions of the University. The Business Voucher Scheme was run to try to increase the engagement with this diverse group of interested stakeholders.
What Barriers stood in the Way of Implementing Developments?
One of the biggest problems with embedding BCE is the size of the organisation. With almost 5000 members of staff spread across three Faculties, 24 Schools, 23 Research Centres and 11 Institutes, as well as the many Central Service Teams, embedding is a huge challenge. As mentioned earlier there was a large amount of engagement activity already happening and moving from local BCE to Institutionally embedded BCE is a huge change management task and cultural shift. Equally with the local BCE activities there are different norms that do not always fit in with a central one size fits all approach. Individual project requirements caused huge problems in designing a University-wide system.
Even at a local level engagement is not always fully recorded and monitored in School or Institute practice often leading to difficulties when collecting data for reporting purposes. Often this engagement is happening with the permission of the Head of School or Institute but not recorded through a formal procedure. This can result in problems with finance, workload reporting and data collection at a University-wide level. It also could have an impact on the workloads of the Central Services who had been unaware that this would require resource from them and therefore would impact on their workloads and priorities. This also has the problem of embedding school specific systems into the minds of academics, when trying to embed a university wide system; this creates a huge change management issue.
This was one of the problems highlighted to the University that resulted in the data collection exercise, which may not have managed to collect all information, and would be out of date within a very short time. Collation of such data is time critical as the University needs to know that it is happening with immediate effect in order to leverage other opportunities across the University. For example if one School is working with an organisation they may have needs or requirements that another School could provide, the University would have more awareness of other areas’ activities and could provide a more holistic approach. This would help break down some of the silos that Staff may work in.
Whilst fundamentally it does not matter about there not being a clear dividing line between Engagement and Research it is an issue if people are not reporting what they are doing as either one, or the other or both. Some people could be doing work that they may consider Research but could also be considered Engagement, or vice versa. On occasion people have been reluctant to take on Engagement work not realising that a lot of the Research they are doing could already be classified as Engagement. Due to the similar overlapping nature of some of this work it is proving very difficult for the University to come up with an appropriate definition of where Engagement stops and Research starts. The University also has conflicting priorities in what to call this work in some cases it is better to classify it as Engagement and in some cases it may be better to consider it as Research. The University’s view of this may differ to the individual’s involved due to different financial benefits, for example overhead rates and government grants such as HEBCIS.
Planning for Sustainable Solutions
As part of our Vision 2021 the University has said that we have three core academic functions:
- research and innovation
- teaching and learning, and the student experience
- engagement
As such it is an integral part of the University’s strategy for the next 10 years. This is evidenced by the fact that Engagement is now part of the portfolio of the DVC.
BCE is a distinct growth area for our University; the following gives an indication of some of the areas that we are working on:
- launch year of “Sustainability” Societal Challenge Theme
- NIReS formally launched November 2010
- drilling of 2km borehole on the Science Central site
- outline planning applications approved
- Science Central approved
- Campus for Ageing and Vitality
- approval for ONE to sell its share of Science Central land to the University and the City Council jointly
- identification of “Social Renewal” as the 3rd Societal Challenge Theme (Launch year 2012)
- appointment of an interim Director of Public Relations
There was also a formal committee set up, comprising 20 members from across the University. There were Faculty level groups set up with membership including the newly mandated Schools’ Directors of Engagement and chaired by the Faculty’s Dean of Engagement. Engagement is included in the Schools’ and Faculties’ 5 year strategic rolling plans.
There is currently an on-going restructure of the Business Development Directorate in order to meet the many challenges that the University is facing, in particular Embedding BCE.
The University traditionally placed a large amount of importance on Research and as such has a number of systems that are designed to facilitate and manage Research. Initially the University tried to adapt the systems and procedures to manage Engagement as well however it was quickly discovered that there is a very different set of requirements for Engagement than for Research. As such the University is developing its own systems that will work for both Research and Engagement, this has multiple benefits including ease of reporting, ease of financial management and University-wide awareness of activity. There is a recording mechanism through the BDD called MyProjects, that is used to record Engagement activity as well as other information, however not all Engagement projects are put through this due to some being too small to make it worthwhile.
Issues and Issue Management
As mentioned above, initially the University tried using the same recording mechanisms for Engagement as Research but soon realised this would not work. Therefore there was a need for a comprehensive costing system to provide financial control, accountability and workload analysis to cover both Engagement and Research.
There have been a number of challenges regarding the management of the cultural change, as staff have already been participating in Engagement but not necessarily recognising it as such. The cultural change management has been devolved to Schools who assign different levels of priority to this resulting in varying levels of embedded Engagement across the University. It has also been difficult as the University has not yet established and embedded a procedure for Engagement that is as rigorous as the Research procedures. There is also the impact of Engagement activities on the Central Services, where they are not involved in the initial proposal and are then required to support the activity which could clash with other priorities.
Impacts/Benefits Identified and Achieved
It is difficult to identify indications for impact and benefits. This is due to the fact that the University still finds it difficult to define Engagement. This is caused by two main reasons, the first of which is the difficulty in differentiating Engagement from Research; the second is ascribing value added as distinct from financial income for work done. Work could be done for no income but there may be a large amount of value added however this is very difficult to measure and the benefits are therefore nigh on impossible to record and report upon. This has resulted in difficulties in indentifying all the engagement activities and the benefits in an appropriate and timely manner. Until this definition has been established it is not practical to fully embed systems for BCE within the University, however as we have seen there is still a huge amount of Engagement happening across the organisation.
The Future
The direction and impact of Engagement for the University remains to be seen with the new DVC. Engagement is widely encouraged across the University and will continue to happen and grow.
Top Ten Tips
The following are ten tips, all of equal importance and in no particular order; some may be more or less relevant to different institutions:
- Make sure you have a strong Leader to ensure there is buy in across the Institution
- Use the tools provided by JISC
- Be aware of the scale of the Embedding challenge
- Be realistic about what you can achieve
- Ensure Engagement is embedded in your Institution’s vision and mission
- Involve all stake holders in the process
- Establish a definition of Engagement that satisfies the Institution’s agenda (but be aware this may not be possible)
- Establish a system to record and monitor Engagement activity
- Ensure your Engagement Strategy is accessible and relevant to all
- Read the JISC case studies and learn from their experiences
