Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Monday 31 July.

It’s been a lively month on campus with two weeks of graduations finishing on Friday and the International Medieval Congress earlier in the month. Thank you to all the many teams involved in making those so successful. 

Cloth Hall Court

Summer is a busy time with summer schools on the way – good luck to everyone making those happen. I was delighted to hear that our newest venue, Cloth Hall Court, has been busy too: between opening at the end of April and the end of this month the Conferencing team have delivered nearly double the amount of events anticipated in the planning process. Fantastic news!  

Jane Clayton has been collating reports from the Employee Engagement Survey, providing overall results for the FD and team-specific results. These have been shared with senior teams and heads of service will be cascading them to all of you in the next few weeks. As ever, our focus – aligned with the business plan – will be on making the FD a great place to work, using what you have told us to improve what we do.  

Staff Voice

I’m really pleased with the progress we’re making on the establishment of the Staff Voice group. As a reminder – and for new colleagues – this is the group of staff from across all of our services who meet regularly to discuss issues raised by their colleagues and who work alongside the senior management team (FDSMT) to shape our direction.  Following the launch event there have been discussions about ways of working with champions and ambassadors. The meetings start in earnest in September.   

Car parking

James Wright and the car parking team are increasing the number of electric car charging points, linking up to the Sustainable Travel principle in the Climate Plan.  As James comments in this news story, delivering services that focus on the needs and expectations of our communities and on environmental sustainability is key to our work and the FD’s business plan.  

Cleaning Services has become a British Institute of Cleaning Science-accredited training centre thanks to the hard work of Jill Roberts and Dawn Abel in the team. The accreditation means that the team can standardise and deliver staff training to the high level set out by BICSc which is recognised internationally and across the industry as a gold standard.  This is a real achievement and ensures the team is even better placed to support the University. My warm congratulations to Jill, Dawn and the team.  You can read more about that in this news story.  

And finally…

Marketing, Sales & Comms are celebrating after winning Best Marketing Campaign at the CUBO awards this year. Tom Pickering and Emily Halsall’s work on attracting new members to The Edge has seen membership back to pre-Covid numbers.

A huge achievement – well done!

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation and Development