<p> Leadership Update </p><p>Date January 2012 This is the latest in a series of regular briefings containing University-wide updates. Briefer This briefing contains a summary of high-level, key messages to support you with your face-to-face communications with your direct reports.</p><p>Ideally, it should be communicated face-to-face to your direct reports by the end of the month – not circulated by email – and should provide an opportunity for your colleagues to give you feedback on the content.</p><p>It need not be presented verbatim. Please summarise where appropriate and deliver in a way you are most comfortable with to ensure that messages are authentic. Please add your own content, which is relevant to your support division, college, school, or area of expertise.</p><p>The briefing should enable your direct reports to brief their own people on some of the Briefing issues facing the University. guidance Please encourage your direct line reports to add more localised information which should still be delivered face-to-face at each stage of the cascade.</p><p>Allow at least an hour for the sharing of information and feedback.</p><p>1. Transformation Phase 2 update</p><p>2. Email and Microsoft Exchange issues</p><p>3. NSS begins 6 February </p><p>4. Professor Jim Yip begins as PVC Research & Innovation </p><p>5. Retrofit 2012 Conference</p><p>Highlights 6. LGBT History Month and Stonewall success this month 7. Client Requested Works Policy</p><p>8. Christmas ‘Switch Off’ savings</p><p>9. January US magazine out now</p><p>10. Changes to webmail and filestore access</p><p>11. Disability Equality at Work handbook now available</p><p>Salford is an enterprising University which transforms individuals and communities through Our mission excellent teaching, research, innovation and engagement.</p><p>The University of Salford will be, by 2017, an outstanding University renowned for the quality of its engagement, humanity, global reach and leadership in research, innovation and </p><p>1 FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY Our vision education. We espouse and promote the following values and behaviours:</p><p>Our values  The highest academic, professional and ethical standards  Service to our stakeholders, clients and partners and, in particular, putting our students first  Supporting our people and recognising and rewarding excellence and leadership  Working together for the advancement of the University  Innovation, creativity, enterprise, courage  Diversity, humanity, fairness and respect  Pride in our heritage and the distinctive difference we make to the world  Investing passion in all that we do.</p><p> Goal 1 – Transforming learning and teaching: Huw Morris</p><p> Goal 2 – Transforming research and innovation: Martin Hall (interim)</p><p>Our six  Goal 3 – Transforming engagement: Keith Barnes goals and  Goal 4 – Our people: Keith Watkinson owners  Goal 5 – Transforming infrastructure and services: Adrian Graves</p><p> Goal 6 – Internationalising our University: Cynthia Pine</p><p> Built and Human Environment: Mike Kagioglou Our four  Energy: Nigel Mellors themes and  Health and Wellbeing: Eileen Fairhurst leads  Media, Digital Technology and the Creative Economy: Brian Longhurst</p><p> The University acknowledges the need to keep its people informed. Our staff perform better when they are involved and when they have an open and honest dialogue with their leaders. Why we  Involvement creates good will and staff are prepared to go the “extra mile”. One of the need these targets for our People Goal 4 is to increase the number of staff engaged to at least 45 per cent by 2012 – placing us in the top quartile of UK organisations. briefings  This briefing will help support you in addressing the issues above and will supplement our US staff magazine, as well as US Online and the Staff Channel.</p><p>2 1. Transformation Phase 2 update</p><p>In preparation for Phase 2 and the implementation of the Model School, representatives from the three Colleges have been meeting with Student Information Directorate (SID) and other central process owners to explore how the suggested process improvement projects will improve the work currently undertaken by Professional Services within the Schools and Colleges. In parallel, staff in Schools and Colleges have been working through a process of validating existing job descriptions to ensure that all the activities currently undertaken locally are acknowledged and none of the local specialist activities are “forgotten” when the Model School is created. </p><p>The Manual of Academic Roles has been circulated for review amongst groups of senior academics and College Programme Implementation Teams (CPITs) with further engagement planned this month and in February. The aim of the document is to provide clarity on all academic roles across the University to ensure colleagues are clear about roles and responsibilities.</p><p>A workshop was held over two days in December to review each of the workstreams within the project and begin to map specific process changes and identify system and policy changes required to support the project implementation. The key changes and requirements have been summarised into a project initiation document (PID) and will be reviewed by CPITs, SID and the Transformation Programme Board for sign off. </p><p>The Providing Academic Governance Project is conducting a structured review of each of the policies and procedures contained within the Academic Handbook to ensure that: they remain fit for purpose, are consistent with the principles of the Academic Portfolio Review, and can be supported in an efficient and effective way with the implementation of the Model School. </p><p>One key area currently under review is Programme Design, Approval and Amendment. The work is being led by Erik Knudson supported by senior administrators including Jayne Langlands and Maria Cornell. The team recently held a workshop with Associate Heads (Academic) and other colleagues from academic and Professional Services units to help prioritise future developments.</p><p>Amongst the improvements identified were the need to reduce the amount of paperwork (possible through IT enablement), provision of an easily accessible institutional repository for approved programme and module information, and keeping the business case of new programmes under review throughout the approval process. The team will review all the suggestions for February prior to consulting colleagues on proposed changes. Any changes identified will be implemented for 2012/13.</p><p>Huw Morris and a team from the Academic Development Unit (ADU), Change Unit, the Academic Progression project, SID and ITS have been exploring - with the company that provides Blackboard - options for better utilising our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to support student learning and teaching. </p><p>These options include making more use of electronic submission, assessment and feedback of work to improve the student experience and help facilitate our commitment to provide feedback to students on all assessed work within three weeks of the submission deadline from September 2012. The first part of this work is the implementation of the upgrade to Blackboard itself to Blackboard v9.1. The Law School is currently undertaking a pilot of this version prior to rolling this out across the University. </p><p>3 FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY Business 2. Email and Microsoft Exchange issues Updates Derek Drury, Chief Information Officer, IT Services, emailed all staff at the University this month regarding ongoing email issues.</p><p>Many of you will be aware that following the user migration to the new Exchange system there has been poor performance on the email system with slow response times and intermittent connection issues which have affected many of the University’s users.</p><p>Unisys, who have designed and implemented the system, are currently handling the issue and have invoked a Priority 1 case with Microsoft which has been ongoing now for over three weeks. Microsoft seem unable to solve the problem and have made the University aware that they are seeing similar issues globally with this technology.</p><p>The issue is not the Exchange servers themselves but a Microsoft product called Forefront which acts as access control and load balancing for the mail servers. The University currently uses part of this system – Unified Access Gateway (UAG) – to control the access and this is where the performance issues.</p><p>Late last week Derek invoked a review of alternative configurations that would remove UAG from the system and this work has now been completed. There are two possible alternative ways to configure the systems, one of which the University is looking to trial in early February. If this is successful then the University will move all users across over the next two weeks. This should not cause any major outages.</p><p>Derek issued apologies for the current disruption and thanked all staff for their patience whilst ITS resolve the Unisys / Microsoft problem. Derek will update staff again in early February with progress on the initial changes.</p><p>3. National Student Survey begins on 6 February</p><p>The annual National Student Survey (NSS) formally starts at the University on 6 February and staff are asked to ensure that all students are given every opportunity to complete the survey.</p><p>The NSS is an opportunity for students to give their opinions on what they liked about their time at our University, as well as commenting on things that they felt could have been improved.</p><p>Good rates of return are important to the University because student feedback is used by prospective students and their advisors when making choices about where and what to study. The NSS results are just one measure of our progress in achieving a high quality of education and ensuring that outstanding student experience is our central purpose.</p><p>The support and assistance of our staff in encouraging students to complete the survey is of vital importance. Last year our overall response rate was 70 per cent – the highest response rate ever achieved at Salford. </p><p>The survey runs nationally for 13 weeks. There will be an intensive two-week period taking place from 13 to 24 February, 2012, with PC suites across the campus booked out at scheduled times for programme leaders to bring cohorts of students to complete the survey. The NSS is commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and conducted by independent market research agency, Ipsos MORI, meaning all responses are anonymous.</p><p>All eligible students who complete the NSS during the two-week intensive period, or other pre- scheduled sessions, will receive a £5 ‘Thank You’ voucher which they can redeem by bringing a printout of the final completion web page to their school office by 30 March 2012. The voucher can be used in the Library (for printer credits), Aramark commercial outlets on the University campus or the Students’ Union.</p><p>4 4. Professor Jim Yip begins as PVC Research & Innovation and Dean of Science & Technology</p><p>Professor Jim Yip joined us this month to begin his orientation around the University ahead of taking over Professor Ghassan Aouad’s role as Dean of the College of Science & Technology and Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC) for Research & Innovation. He will be involved in key decisions affecting future activity in each area to ensure a smooth transitional period before taking up his full portfolio from Wednesday1 February, 2012.</p><p>During Professor Yip’s orientation Vice-Chancellor, Professor Martin Hall, will remain Acting Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC) for Research and Innovation and Professor Kagioglou will remain as Acting Dean of the College of Science & Technology until the end of January.</p><p>Professor Yip is no stranger to Salford, having been with our Information Technology Institute for 10 years from 1988 and serving as Deputy Director of the Institute from 1995-98. He joins us from Huddersfield University where he was Dean of the School of Computing and Engineering, and of Enterprise. Previous to this he was Dean of the School of Computing at the University of Teeside. </p><p>5. Retrofit 2012 Conference Three hundred and fifty delegates attended the second annual Retrofit conference this month - the only major conference on reducing fuel poverty and making our homes more energy- efficient which brings together academics, the construction industry and the housing sector.</p><p>Taking place from 24 to 26 January, the University hosted the event at the Lowry theatre with discussion and debate on the challenges of the large-scale behaviour change needed in the UK if the government is to achieve its carbon reduction targets.</p><p>To find out more, please visit www.energy.salford.ac.uk/retrofit-salford-2012. You can also view updates from the conference on Twitter @UoSEnergy and Facebook at www.facebook.com/UoSEnergy. </p><p>6. LGBT History Month and Stonewall success </p><p>The University has achieved 21st place in the annual Top 100 ranking of organisations for employing lesbian, gay and bisexual staff, climbing substantially from its previous ranking of 60th. Salford was second only to Cambridge University as the top-ranked higher education institution in England on the Workplace Index published by lesbian, gay and bisexual charity Stonewall.</p><p>Now the University is preparing for its annual celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) History Month which begins on Thursday 2 February with a special launch event at our MediaCityUK facility from 6.15pm until 8.30pm. Staff can attend the event, Sports, Media and Sexuality: A Panel Discussion, to join leading figures from the world of sport and media for a discussion on the representation of LGBT issues in contemporary sports journalism.</p><p>Guests taking part include basketball star Jon Amaechi, who was the first NBA player to come out; former BBC commentator and sports reporter Bob Ballard; Sarah Williams, Equality & Diversity Manager for Rugby Football League; Claire Harvey, Paralympian sitting volleyball player; Chris Noble MBE, Director of Sheffield Eagles, and Dave Randles, sports journalist and Salford lecturer. </p><p>For more information on the events, including details on times and venues, please visit http://www.equality.salford.ac.uk/page/lgbt_2012.</p><p>5 FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY 7. Client Requested Works Policy</p><p>A new policy is being introduced to govern the way staff can commission Estates works will save the University a minimum of £130,000 per year.</p><p>The Non Pay Project team has been working with Estates to launch the new directive, which will introduce changes to ensure that any work carried out is affordable, equitable and aligned with strategy.</p><p>The main changes are:</p><p> Budget holders are now able to request works up to £1000 via the Estates helpdesk</p><p> Any requests between £1000 and £50,000 will be referred to the Client Requested Estates Works Evaluation Group, who will review and make a recommendation to the Capital Investment Group (CIG) </p><p> Requests for works costing more than £50,000 will be authorised by CIG in the normal way </p><p>The policy document can be found at www.estates.salford.ac.uk/Policies_and_Procedures</p><p>Staff are asked to read the policy and follow these new procedures when requesting estates works. For more information on the introduction of the new policy, please contact Chris Large on x55600 or at [email protected].</p><p>8. Christmas ‘Switch Off’ savings</p><p>The University’s Christmas ‘Switch Off’ campaign saw staff turn off their PCs and electrical appliances over the holiday period in order to reduce the University’s energy consumption during the annual closure.</p><p>Overall the University reduced its baseload energy consumption by 13.5 per cent over the holiday period as compared to normal weekend consumption. This equates to a saving of 34,000kg of CO2 or £3,200 - a further reduction of 2 per cent on last year’s 11.5 per cent total reduction.</p><p>The best performers were Adelphi campus who reduced their baseload by 41 per cent and Peel campus who made a reduction of 20 per cent. Of our halls of residence, the best performer was Matthias Court which reduced its baseload consumption by 4.5 per cent. </p><p>The results show that if these measures were carried out every night and at the weekends we would save 8 per cent of our electrical load. This equates to savings of 920,000kg of CO2 on our carbon footprint and £160,000 per year of financial savings.</p><p>For more information please visit http://www.estates.salford.ac.uk/environment.</p><p>9. January US magazine is out now</p><p>The January issue of US Magazine is out now.This issue includes articles on some of the new individuals who have joined the University, details of our new Community Engagement Network and a centrespread focusing on internationalisation, student recruitment and research work in China. </p><p>Other articles cover university-wide open days, Nigel Mellors’ role as our new Energy theme lead and Joe Duddell’s work with James. The magazine also gives an update on our Transformation Programme with a particular focus on some of the new Student Information Managers who will be supporting each College.</p><p>6 If you have not received your copy of US magazine then please contact your Building Manager or email Internal Communications on [email protected]. An online copy of US magazine can be found at http://staff.salford.ac.uk/internalcomms/us- magazine.php</p><p>10. Changes to webmail and filestore access</p><p>As part of the ongoing service improvement to the Staff email system, the University’s webmail is now accessed via a new web portal, which has been introduced as part of the email migration process.</p><p>Staff can access the portal by clicking on the new webmail and F: drive icon, which can be found at the top of the University Staff Channel homepage where they will be asked to login, making sure to include ISDADS\ before their user name and using their normal passwords.</p><p>On screen instructions will instruct staff to install an improved version of the University of Salford Portal. The installation should take about 20 seconds to update and will then reconnect to the normal logon authentication box. Other operating systems and internet browsers offer a slightly different experience but will still present a form of download/installation window. To connect with webmail, staff should choose the Outlook Web App option when it appears on screen.</p><p>Guidance and support during the email migration is available from:</p><p> A new guide, called Email - Outlook Web App  A new e-learning Toolkit – Using Staff Email via the Internet: Outlook Web App 2010  A member of HRD’s Digital Skills Team at the Drop-In Surgery, every Wednesday, from 1-3pm in Newton B04b</p><p>Staff using an iPhone or other type of Smartphone to connect with university email, should also change the set-up process to ensure that it synchronises properly.</p><p>User guides to help with this and other computing-related issues are available at http://www.salford.ac.uk/library/help/userguides#computing-tab. </p><p>For further support, staff should contact IT Service desk on 52444. </p><p>11. Disability Equality at Work handbook is now available</p><p>The Disability Equality at Work handbook is now available online with a small number of hard copies also available. This handbook was produced by the HR Division in collaboration with Salford University Disabled Staff (SUDS) network and was launched by the Vice-Chancellor on the International Day of Disabled People on 2 December 2011.</p><p>It has been produced for all managers and staff to help them to understand and deal with disability issues in the workplace and to seek assistance for making reasonable adjustments to help alleviate the effects of disability on staff at work. Making reasonable adjustments is the most important duty for any employer in relation to disability.</p><p>Please visit http://www.hr.salford.ac.uk/documents/Disability%20Equality%20brochure %20spages.pdf for the full online document. </p><p>A small number of booklets have also been produced as hard copies and are available from HR Services on x52121. They will also be sent to senior managers to facilitate understanding of its contents amongst staff and discussions within their teams. </p><p>For further information, please contact Mohammad Mahmoud-Zadeh on x53592.</p><p>7 FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY College/ Include any relevant information relating to your College or Professional Services Division. Divisional communications</p><p>School/ Department/ Include any relevant information relating to your School or Professional Services Unit/Section. Section communications</p><p>8 Record of notes and feedback from briefing session:</p><p>9 FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY 10</p>