Your ideas on
the other factors
Step 3:
What to do now – This is your Action Plan
Our Action Plan
Colleague engagement is about making sure that
the University of Salford is a great place to work
and you have a really important role to play in that.
We’ve already started on this journey together with
team conversations about the Best Companies 8
workplace factors for engagement. Now it’s time to
look at our results in more detail; please follow the
steps on this page.
Making a better workplace starts with you. The VC and her team want you to work with colleagues
in your teams, departments and directorates to locally improve the workplace around you and your
experience of working here. Four of the workplace factors have been identified as ones where you
can make the most local impact and so these have been put in a template overleaf. This is the main
part of your ‘planning’ and ‘doing’ in response to the Best Companies survey results.
The four workplace factors to focus on in your Action Plan are as follows.
We have provided some thoughts around these to kick start ideas but know
you'll have many more.
Wellbeing
Giving Something Back
• Local arrangements to improve
work-life balance
• Volunteering with local groups and schools
• Review of workloads and use of email
• Improvements to colleague break areas,
e.g. table tennis, music, book-swaps
• Team events transforming local environments
• Charity initiatives or fundraising
• Car sharing
Step 1:
• Greener office environments
Best Companies results
Personal Growth
My Team
• Informal learning and knowledge
sharing ‘get-togethers’ on different topics
• Ideas to reduce bureaucracy and work better
together as a team
• Awards to celebrate achievements
• Team building activities, e.g. competitions to
support major sporting events
The University-level and local results of the Best Companies
colleague engagement survey (conducted in October/November
2015) are now available. By looking at these you can see how we
scored and how engaged we are against the 8 workplace factors
across the University. There will be guided presentations in your
school or professional service area for a more in depth look at
your local results.
• Local coaching, mentoring or shadowing
opportunities
• Space and time for group talks or
initiatives relating to personal interests
Step 2:
Discussing the results –
Moving US forward together
Depending on your school or professional service you’ll be taking
slightly different approaches to discussing the results and action
planning, so you may be involved in presentations, workshops,
team conversations, action learning groups or discussions with
groups of colleagues.
However you engage, the purpose of all of this is the same; to
identify the things which are most important to you locally and
put in place clear goal-orientated ways in which to improve. This
may include:
• identifying and sharing existing good practice more widely
• developing new or innovative approaches to current
practices or issues
• pin-pointing where things aren’t working well and suggesting
actions to improve
• Socialising together, e.g. lunch breaks together
on a Friday
• Colleague recognition for going the extra mile,
e.g. ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ cards
Start now!
Regardless of how the action planning
process is being organised in your
school or professional service, you can
start thinking of action planning ideas
as soon as you see the survey results.
In fact, many of you have already got
great ideas for improvements and
have discussed these in your team
conversations on the 8 factors.
Action planning is a continuous process so your local
Exec or senior management team will give you a
steer on how the action planning information should
be collated, monitored and updated. The action plan
will be monitored by local Exec teams and HR
Business Partners. The main activity should take place
during April and May 2016 but working on ‘doing’
the actions can often start straight away alongside
the plan being developed.
We’ll be participating in the Best Companies survey
again in autumn 2016 so by this summer it’d be great
for us all to get a sense of real progress on the things
that we feel most passionately about improving.
The remaining 4 workplace factors;
Leadership, My Manager, My
Company and Fair Deal require
specific attention at a University
level. The University Management
Team will be examining these 4
factors in detail, working with
colleagues across the institution to
identify what action is needed to
improve our workplace and overall
level of colleague engagement. This
is likely to include things which need
University-level action, e.g. new
schemes or policy approaches.
However, your views matter too! It’s
important that you get a chance to
contribute your ideas on these
factors and on how we can improve.
The leader of your school or
professional service will advise you
on how she or he is collecting local
input, which may be through
discussion groups, written
suggestions or other methods.
Suggestions already contributed as
part of the Best Companies
conversations held in teams in
January/February have been collated
and will be fed in to the planning.
These are all really valuable –
so thank you.
Supplementary
information
To support you in the action planning
process you should have access to
University level results, your local
results pack, and a steer from your
local executive or senior
management team.
Our Action Plan
What will you do?
1
Wellbeing
How colleagues
feel about stress,
pressure at work
and life balance
Personal
Growth
How colleagues feel
about training and their
future prospects
Giving
Something
Back
The extent to which
colleagues feel their
organisation has a
positive impact
on society
My Team
Colleagues’ feeling
towards their
immediate colleagues
and how well they
work together
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
Concentrate on your top 3 actions for each factor. Make them achievable and
relevant. Focusing on 3 strong, clear actions that everyone can commit to will
result in increased motivation and an ability to make things happen.
By when?
Who is
responsible?
What help do you need
in achieving this?