Technical Services Review Themes

Three sub-groups have been established to support work on the following themes: Culture and Organisation; People and Structures and Finance. The main focus areas of each of these themes are outlined below.

Culture and Organisation

Key focus areas:

• Explore and determine what will generate and sustain a culture of flexibility in the provision of technical services to support the optimisation of functioning
• Assess features of the current structure and organisation of technical services and identify stakeholder priorities for a well-formed structure

We will use straightforward definitions of organisational culture and structure to assess the ‘as-is’ and ‘desired’ culture and structure, and consider how flexibility, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, etc. can be enhanced.

Our work on this theme will draw on the experience and knowledge of the Technical Services staff, Stakeholders, Service users and the TSRG of processes, locations, routines and management practices of the Services. Survey outputs and other data/artefacts including interviews with Technical Services staff, extracts from job descriptions and anonymised PDR text will also feed into this work. 

People and Structures

Key focus areas: 

• Examine the current role of the Technical line manager (Grades 6, 7 and 8)
• Explore the current ratio of staff to management and reporting structure
• Establish the training and development needs and requirements for those with line management responsibility
• Ask ‘what a viable career structure for technical colleagues would look like?’
• Establish what personal and team development is available, along with pastor/welfare support 

We will explore the current perceptions of the above topics from the viewpoint of Technical Services staff along with Stakeholders and Service Users. This is will be based on the results from the survey as well as engagement sessions with Technical Staff and relevant Stakeholders

We will review current arrangements to determine which of these are working well, and which need improving, and these findings will help us formulate our final recommendations.  

Finance 

Finance is supporting the main themes, particularly around research cost recovery and also the pay cost target reduction.