School Executive e-bulletin introduction from Sarah Featherstone

27 Mar 2026

This week, Sarah Featherstone, Director of Operations introduces the e-bulletin

Dear all

Eid Mubarak to everyone who was celebrating with families and friends last weekend.

I heard the phrase ‘Fools Spring’ for the first time recently, which AI tells me is a brief period of unusually warm, sunny weather occurring in late winter or early spring that tricks people into believing winter is over, only to be followed by a sudden cold snap, frost, or snow! I think the last few days is testament to us very much experiencing a Fools Spring in Manchester, however on the positive side the clocks go forward one hour this weekend, which signals months of light mornings and long light evenings, which certainly lifts the spirits.

As always, there’s a significant amount going on across the professional services in the School and I am hugely grateful for the breadth of activities that are supported, and the work taking place to enhance our working and learning space. Whilst I recognise that some of this work does cause short term disruption – for example, the floor replacement in Café 65 and continued Wi-Fi network improvements – it does hopefully lead to us having a space where all colleagues and students can thrive. It is worth noting that forthcoming work is due to start in April on replacing the doors to the Executive Education Centre, and we will also be commencing work this year to instal bi-folding doors in The Mill, including some redevelopment of our outdoor space. At our annual PS Summit in January, we also focused on a reception/AMBS entrance deep dive and received a wide range of feedback about how we can enhance the space as colleagues and visitors come into AMBS, which our Quality Standards and Enhancements Group are now starting to work through.

I often reflect that I’ve stayed at the University of Manchester for 21 years (18 in AMBS!) because of people and purpose. It’s hugely inspiring to work collectively with students, academic and PS colleagues, and so I welcomed the opportunity to have a group discussion at our School Board last week around how we maximise collegial and productive working relationships between professional services and academic colleagues. I was even more delighted that this was titled ‘where the magic happens!’ Naturally, our various colleague and student communities will always look at things through different lenses, and we won’t always agree or get it right, however I firmly believe that great partnership working is the essence to our collective success.

This leads me nicely on to the Your Voice Matters survey. Over the past two weeks, colleagues across AMBS and the wider University have been sharing their experiences via this survey, which is one of the best ways for us to understand what it really feels like to work here and where we need to focus on improvements and change. Your feedback matters because it directly informs the decisions we take locally at AMBS and over the past year, we have seen how colleague feedback can translate into real action.

If you have not yet completed the Your Voice Matters survey, there is still time to do so before it closes next Tuesday (31 March 2026). AMBS currently has a 47% response rate (71% Professional Services, 33% academic and 20% research colleagues) which overall is slightly better than last year but we did have a 39% response rate from our academic community last year so we would really appreciate you finding ten minutes to complete your survey.

Sarah