Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Thursday 27 February. 

Isn’t it great to see the Spring flowers starting to come through on campus? I can’t wait to see the full effect of all the work by Grounds and Gardens!

It’s a busy time of year as the University focuses on student offer holder days and the build-up to open days. We all know that doing everything we can to support student recruitment is key, and my thanks go to the teams that are involved in making campus look shipshape for our visitors.

Have your say: One Leeds and Employee Engagement Survey

The Employee Engagement Survey is now open and you should all have received an email from the University with your link to complete the survey. Some colleagues have asked for paper copies. I hope that you’ll all take the opportunity to share your thoughts. It is so important that we hear your thoughts, all the returns are anonymous so please be honest, it will make a difference

Hopefully you’ve all seen the email this week from the Vice-Chancellor and President – Shearer West – about the ‘One Leeds’ mid-term strategy refresh. We are five years into the University’s ten year strategy and Shearer wants to use this moment to review and refresh it.

She would like feedback from staff over the next month. Of course, this is entirely voluntary, but I hope that many of you will feed in your ideas.

She has written a ‘Green Paper’ document that asks questions about four areas: Academic Vision; People & Culture; Processes, Systems and Structures, and Opportunities. She is asking staff to click into each area, read the information and offer their thoughts by answering some questions posed at the end.

All the information you need is here on the staff intranet. Please ask your heads of service or line managers if you have any questions. They will allow you time to contribute to both questionnaires.

FD Online Town Halls and Q&A sessions

I hope you enjoyed the FD Town Hall session on 28 January in which Angela Baker, our People and Culture Lead, updated us about work that had taken place on the back of the 2023 Staff Survey results. It was really clear that understanding the views of staff helps us shape our future work in the FD.

If you missed it, here’s a link to a recording of the session. Angela’s presentation is from 7.46 minutes to 19.30.

The next Town Hall is on Tuesday 4 March at 10am. I will give a short update and then we’ll have an update on Net Zero and Sustainability work from James Dixon-Gough, Jane Dickinson and Lorraine Jones. You should all have received an email invitation. Please let the Facilities Directorate Office know if you haven’t.

FD successes

I am pleased to share news from the Sustainability Service that Blueprint, their flagship sustainability staff engagement programme, has won the Cultural Change for Sustainability category at the International Sustainable Campus Network Awards.

Blueprint was created to empower Schools and Services across the University to create bespoke five-year plans that address local and global sustainability challenges in line with institutional commitments. Congratulations to all involved.

Thank you

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who worked to make the Campus Reimagined Live event such a success. I’ve lost count of the number of positive comments that have come my way. We had over 3,000 people visit, and it was great to see people from the FD taking part.

The next step is to feed back and to decide on six big ideas for short term projects. You’ll be hearing about this in the Spring.

Thanks

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development