Have you ever wondered who makes up our executive leadership, what they talk about and what decisions they are making? This section of Southampton Connects Staff will provide a monthly insight into what is happening on the University Executive Board (UEB).
This group, which provides the executive leadership for the University, brings together the President and Vice-Chancellor, Chief Operating Officer, deans, pro vice-chancellors (or vice-presidents in the future) and the directors of Human Resources and Finance. They meet formally once each month for briefings, updates and to make decisions.
UEB sets the strategic direction and has oversight of how the University is managed, so finance, health and safety, and equality and diversity are on the agenda as standing items every month. The Board meets every week to have informal meetings to address emerging topics and formulate policy on a wide range of subjects which are taken forward to the formal monthly meetings for approval.
Here are your updates from the last three UEB meetings, starting with the most recent.
April 2016
Finding savings
With financial sustainability one of the four principles of our strategy, the UEB has started an initial cost management exercise (the baseline budget review) to find sustainable savings within the most discretionary (non-salary and non-directly funded) spend in faculties.
A 10 per cent savings target was set across the faculties (equivalent to £4m of savings, with varied targets between the faculties). £2m of this has already been found in a short space of time.
Some common issues appeared across several faculties, for example the relatively high printing spend for postgraduate researchers and the potential to reduce spend on travel (by flying economy, for example).
Staff Survey
Understanding how staff feel about working for the University is a first step towards improving collegiality, one of the principles of our strategy. Staff have the opportunity to give their views in the the Staff Engagement Survey 2016, which started on 10 May and will close on 24 May.
March 2016
Strategic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)
There is always plenty of preparation by UEB ahead of University Council meetings, with planning discussions, updates on agenda items and the sharing of papers. To be ready for Council on 16 March and after several previous discussions, UEB endorsed the University’s strategic goals and KPIs.
You can view the goals and KPIs in the resources list on the Strategy SharePoint site and in the booklet that all staff members received on the week commencing 21 March.
Strategy development is an ongoing activity for UEB, and its next step is to review the strategic priorities.
Academic business reviews
Last summer, a new project, the Academic Business Review, was established; this ran alongside the Business Model Review. In March this year, UEB approved proposals for the process that was followed as part of this project to become an annual activity.
UEB agreed that the initial stage, which involved evaluating the performance of each academic area based on a collection of metrics, will become part of business planning. This will be followed by approximately three bespoke and more in-depth reviews of specific academic areas each year, eventually covering all disciplines
February 2016
This was the first formal meeting of UEB since its formation in late January 2016.
Student number plans
UEB reviewed and provisionally accepted the revised student number plans, recognising these may need to be adapted, given the principle of quality set out in the new strategy.
The revised student number plans are based on reduced numbers from the initial plans put forward by faculties in late 2015, which, collectively, were seen to put too high a pressure on University capacity. The revised planned student population for 2016/17 is 23,887 FTE.
UEB noted that a proposal for managing capacity will be brought to a future UEB meeting and that capacity will be a key consideration in business planning. A capacity working group has been meeting since November. Its considerations include teaching space, timetabling, transport, catering and library space.
Reward: moderation of new appraisal system
UEB approved the moderation outcomes and the distribution of moderation ratings across the faculties.
Between September and December last year, professorial staff were required to complete their appraisals using the new appraisal system for the first time. In January this year, faculties conducted moderation exercises with a view to achieving fairness and consistency in appraisal ratings.
Overall, the University is close to the benchmark distribution for the five different appraisal ratings we use for our staff. This means that the current distribution of appraisal ratings would produce an affordable outcome in terms of pay progression for the professoriate.
