Development Monthly | #34 August 2024 | Reset & Connect Over The Summer
Universities Human Resources (UHR) is the professional organisation for Human Resources practitioners in UK Higher Education with 165 institutional members, spanning a wide range of Higher Education providers (HEPs), and over 4500 individual HR and related staff who regularly access our services and resources. UHR seeks to foster credible, sustainable high performance in Human Resources, Organisational Development and People Services teams, building people capacity and enhancing culture and organisational effectiveness in higher education to embrace future changes, opportunities and challenges.
We also aim to be the voice of the HR profession within and beyond HE, promoting the people agenda as a priority for everyone whilst working in partnership with other related organisations to create synergies and efficiencies for our members. Whilst we exist as an organisation to support HR and People practitioners, we appreciate the increasing blurring of boundaries across professional services roles and we continue to partner with other membership organisations such as the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG), the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) and the Higher Education Strategic Planners Association (HESPA) on areas of mutual interest such as reward, recruitment and data analytics.
Collaboration in the climate of today
It has been a tumultuous few years in HE. Whether it be the impacts of a pandemic; the “great resignation”; highest sickness absence since records began; industrial action; the “war on woke” or the cost of living crisis, HR and People professionals in HE have arguably had a lot on their plates. Now, with financial uncertainty firmly entrenched and a change of Government, the sector isn’t feeling any less unstable and our members, alongside all HE professionals, are being asked to do more, with less. Indeed, UHR’s recent sector remit surveys have provided valuable insight into the challenges facing HR and People teams in universities.
Our most recent survey revealed that two thirds of HR leaders had seen significant changes to the HR team size, structure or ways of working in the past 5 years, with the most common reasons being an increase in size of the HR function; additional areas of responsibility; implementing hybrid working and a restructuring of the HR team. HR leaders told us that the drivers for change in their teams included systems, processes and automation; optimising efficiencies and restructuring. What we are also seeing is a genuine focus from HR leaders on the wellbeing of their teams, particularly at the current time of uncertainty and upheaval in the sector, as well as a desire to create more innovative ways in which staff can progress their careers.
Who are we?
The question for us at UHR has been, how can we best support our members through difficult times? UHR as an organisation aims to enable and energise our members to access and share information, learning and good practice. One of the ways we’ve been doing this over the past two years is through the development of our member networks. We’ve established nine special interest networks around themes which resonated with our members in order to provide connections, share good practice, learn from one another and ultimately provide support and camaraderie as well.
Our networks include groups dedicated to:
- Employee Engagement
- Ways of Working
- Employee Investigations
- Career Pathways
- HR Policy
- Inclusive Recruitment
- HR Operations
- Data Analytics
- REF, Research Culture & Research Assessment
Implementing collaboration
Currently over 800 of our members from 149 different HEIs are part of one or more network. All of them are supported by a dedicated Teams site allowing members to ask questions and connect with each other easily, often taking conversations offline by sharing contact details. Most of the networks also meet quarterly via Teams, allowing good practice examples to be shared as well as hosting expert guest speakers. The Networks sound like a simple concept and, in fact, they are. At UHR we also use them to gather information and feedback from members to inform our own research and we can easily reach out to the groups to share webinars or CPD that we run.
We were able to offer the Networks a tailored conference guide for our 2024 online conference, which meant that members could easily see the sessions which might be of interest, maximising their time over the three day event.
Sustaining collaboration
As we approach the summer break, we’re reflecting on what makes our Networks such a popular part of our offering at UHR. We think it’s because they provide connection – in a world where we are often short on time, they allow a simple and low-effort way to reach out to one another, to provide support and suggestions on how to do things better. The HE sector is incredibly collegiate and people are willing to share, despite HEIs being ‘competitors’.
Collaboration doesn’t always have to be highly facilitated in order to be effective, sometimes it’s enough just to set up a short call with a colleague to discuss your family leave policy, other times listening to a presentation from a researcher on obesity stigma is enough to spur you into action. There are some occasions where it is simply good to find out you are not alone in facing a sector-specific challenge and there is comfort there in the form of a peer at the other end of the country acting as a sympathetic ear. Technology has radically shifted the way in which we connect with each other and applications such as Teams means that, for UHR staff, we can “visit” members all over the UK at the touch of a button. Over time, these connections might prove valuable in members’ personal development and career progression, both within the sector and beyond. Ultimately though, one message stands out and that is, we are much stronger together than we are apart.
That being said, we all need a break sometimes. We hope that you manage to get some rest and relaxation over the summer period and enjoy the longer days (if not the warmer weather!) and hopefully some time away from the screen, ready to come back refreshed in September 2024 ready to forge new and meaningful connections.
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