UHR Spring 2016 Newsletter

Plans are well under way for 2016’s conference, from 17 – 20 May at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Once again we’ve had a great number of early bird bookings, so we’ll be taking over the entire hotel, with a stimulating range of speakers lined up.  Dame Julia Goodfellow, President of UUK and Vice Chancellor of the University of Kent will open the conference, followed by Peter Cheese, the Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.  We’ll also have plenaries featuring Philip Ross, CEO of UNGroup, Sue Holmes, the Chair of AUDE, and Simon Fanshawe, OBE, who will also be compering the awards at the gala dinner. For HR Directors, the Forum on Tuesday afternoon will be a masterclass with Adrian Furnham, organisational behaviour and psychology expert. Delegates who have already booked will be contacted shortly about booking their choice of workshops, legal seminars, and social activities.  It’s first come, first served, so don’t leave it too long to book for the conference, whether as a full delegate, a day delegate, or for the gala dinner if you’ve entered for the UHR awards. 

More details available here

There’s less than four weeks to go until the closing date for the 2016 UHR awards for excellence in HR.  Running since 2006, the awards have become a key feature of UHR’s programme.  One of our key objectives is to identify, celebrate and disseminate good HR practice in our member organisations, and the awards play a big part in that.  In the past, they have covered everything from restructuring HR services to equality and diversity projects, major OD interventions to innovative approaches to staff engagement.  Every type and size of higher education institution has a chance of winning, as innovation and excellence aren’t restricted to large departments.  Entering isn’t just about winning though, great as the publicity and feedback are from picking up an award or commendation.  The process of entering gives your HR team the opportunity to reflect on what you’ve done over the past year or two, and how you approached it.  What worked well?  Where have you created value for your organisation or made a material difference?  How have you turned a potentially difficult situation into a winner, by the way you’ve handled it?  Many teams have found that process of reflection has been a real encouragement, and a useful foundation for future work.

There are three team categories as usual;

Business Effectiveness and Organisational Development: for an initiative led by, or with significant input from, HR that demonstrably enhanced organisational performance, or by achieving culture change, positioned the organisation effectively to meet future challenges and uncertainty.

Equality and Diversity: for the role of HR in a successful initiative involving equality or diversity.

Exceptional HR: for exceptional achievement by an HR team.

And for 2016, there’s a new category, to mark the UHR awards’ 10th anniversary:
Outstanding Individual Achievement: for outstanding achievement in HR by an individual.

We’ll be announcing the winners at the UHR conference gala dinner, this year on Thursday 19 May- but it doesn’t end there. As well as the ‘Showcasing Good Practice’ day, we produce a printed newsletter featuring the winners and commended entries, and many entries are publicised in other ways, such as regional groups, articles in UHR’s e-newsletters, and being used as case studies in national policy work and evidence to government.

If you’ve entered before, why not enter again?  (One institution won three years in a row!)  If you entered but didn’t win, don’t let that put you off – there’s a lot to gain from identifying what you believe you’ve done well.  The important thing is that evidence of measurable achievement and impact should be clearly demonstrated, as the purpose of the awards is to be able to share with the rest of the HE community, good practice that actually produces results. It’s important that your entry is a project or initiative that has already been implemented and produced real results, rather than a good idea with potential that hasn’t yet made a demonstrable difference.

So how do you enter?  Visit www.uhr.ac.uk/Awards.aspx  to download a copy of the entry form, and find information about the judging criteria and the panel of experts who’ll be assessing the entries, and see some previous years’ winning and commended projects.

The closing date for entries is Monday 21 March, to be emailed to exec@uhr.ac.uk

• Power, Politics and Board Influence
• Delivering Transformational Change
• UHR Annual Conference
• Introduction to HE for HR Professionals
• HR Directors’ Day
• Cross functional action learning sets for Deputy HR Directors
• Evaluating the Impact of Strategic HR
• Strengthening Personal Impact
• Solutions for Organisational Success
• The Art of Influencing Line Managers
• Working in Partnership
• Delivering Service Excellence

Think human resource efficiency is just about redundancies? Think again. In this post, the Universities and Colleges Employers Association’s Laurence Hopkins explores a range of ways in which Higher Education institutions are increasing organisational efficiency and effectiveness through their human resources policies.

Mention the words ‘efficiency’ and ‘HR’ in the same sentence and many members of staff may start thinking ‘redundancies’. However, UCEA’s 2015 Workforce Survey, carried out in association with HEFCE, shows that efficiency in the employment of people means much more than this.
Investment in staff comprises more than half of the sector’s expenditure. This is why any serious consideration of efficiency and effectiveness must take account of how this money is spent as well as the outcomes for students and others that are achieved through that investment. However, unlike some operational areas, the ‘human’ element of HR must be a factor in improving outcomes. This can often sit uneasily with the reduction of efficiency to a set of metrics. It does not follow that data and metrics on the workforce are unhelpful, but that HEIs will, for example, want to assess the quality of staff brought into the organisation as a result of recruitment and selection, not just the average cost of each hire.

The UCEA Workforce Survey has for some years played an important role in monitoring trends and practices in the management of the HE workforce alongside important metrics and qualitative information on recruitment and retention challenges. The 2013 Workforce Survey was an important reference point for Universities UK’s 2015 report Efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money, particularly the information gathered on managing workforce costs. The 2015 survey is equally helpful as it provides further evidence on practice in HEIs, including the use of outsourced service providers and shared services.
Our latest survey reveals that improving the efficiency of HR processes is the most common activity among HEIs to enhance the effectiveness of HR and reduce associated costs, with 60% of HEIs reporting recent improvements and a further 22% planning on making changes.  This was followed closely by restructuring and redeploying staff to new roles (58%) and increasing the use of direct recruitment methods (49%). By comparison, only 27% of responding HEIs reported that they were currently reducing headcount with even fewer planning to do so in the near future (9%).

Outsourcing of services is common in the HE sector with 55% of HEIs completely outsourcing at least one service and 85% outsourcing at least one service in part. The areas that are most commonly outsourced are cleaning – 30% fully outsourced, 19% partly outsourced, security – 28% and 19% – and catering – 35% and 12%. Outsourcing of legal services and maintenance is also common but is more likely to be done on a part-outsourced basis. Since 2013 there has been little change in the proportion of HEIs outsourcing cleaning and catering, but the proportion of HEIs part-outsourcing security has increased from 11% to 19%, although there has been no change in the fully outsourced percentage. Shared services appear to be less popular with only two or three HEIs reporting such an arrangement in each of the main operational areas.
 

It seems clear that improving HR processes, restructuring and using direct recruitment methods are important approaches to efficiency alongside outsourcing and shared services, but what are the actual cost/efficiency savings associated with these changes? HEFCE’s analysis of value for money (VfM) reports found that the most common areas for cost/efficiency savings were in estates and through ‘cross-cutting’ initiatives. In the HR function itself, around 20 HEIs reported VfM savings but in terms of the larger efficiency savings regarding workforce, the largest by some margin have been achieved through organisational restructuring, with staff redundancies coming in at a distant second place – see table below.

Cost/Efficiency savings reported in Value for Money Reports, 2013-14 – HR and workforce-related


Source: HEFCE, 2015. www.hefce.ac.uk/reg/guidance/vfmon/

It is more difficult to disaggregate the impact of HR process improvements from the HEFCE report as these are aggregated across all functions, as is the use of online/electronic media, which could refer to staff recruitment but could equally refer to marketing or other activities. Staff recruitment costs are clearly being targeted as some reports from previous years that are in the public domain attest. One example of this is a pre-92 university reporting a 64% reduction in job advertising spend over three years from £433,000 to £154,000.

Although the Workforce Survey and HEFCE’s analysis of VfM reports provide solid evidence on the approaches to improving efficiency and effectiveness as well as estimating the cost/efficiency savings, there is still more to be done. UUK’s 2015 report concluded that while VfM reports ‘provide a valuable resource for understanding efficiency and cost savings in the sector’, a ‘more robust, accessible and comprehensive mechanism is needed’. To this end the report recommended that a common framework of key information on efficiency should be developed, which institutions can use to inform their own value for money reports.
This work has been taken forward by UUK and HEFCE with a view to publishing a common framework next year. A more consistent approach to reporting in England and an increase in the number of HEIs publishing these reports will improve the sector’s ability to track progress and share good practice as well as better highlighting the contribution made by HR. We hope that alongside these annual reports we can continue to capture development and changes in practice in our 2017 Workforce Survey.

Laurence Hopkins,
Head of Research, UCEA

This article has been reproduced from the Efficiency Exchange with permission. To subscribe, visit: www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk

http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk/8246/fitter-for-the-future/

Mike Harrison of Mercers gives a round-up of pension tax changes and the implications for HR and HE.  Mercers will be exhibiting at the UHR conference in May.

What’s happening?
Last year, the government announced yet more changes to the tax relief available on pension savings. These changes will come into force from April 2016.  

Pensions tax now affects hundreds of TPs, Uss, nHsPs and LGPs members and not just the highest earners. 

We’ve seen colleagues receiving pensions tax communications and struggling to understand what it means and what they could and should do about it. It doesn’t help that the tax rules are horribly complicated and constantly changing (at the same time as changes in the pension schemes).  
As a result, we’re seeing some people making really bad decisions – people are leaving high quality pension arrangements because they are fearful of experiencing a tax charge – and are actually making themselves much worse off.

Current restrictions 
If the amount of your annual pension savings is above a certain level or if the value of your total pensions savings at retirement exceeds a certain threshold, then extra taxes may be due. Both Defined contribution (Dc) and Defined Benefit (DB) pension savings are included in the tests.
 
Annual Allowance – this is a limit on the increase in a member’s pension savings in each year. If you exceed it, an additional tax charge may be due for that year. The annual allowance is currently £40,000 and is tested each year.

Lifetime allowance – this is a limit on the value of a member’s total pension savings over their whole working lifetime before extra tax may be due. The lifetime allowance is currently £1.25 million and is tested when a member first takes their benefits.

What’s Changing from April 2016
Annual Allowance – some people will have a reduced annual allowance (between £10,000 and £40,000), depending on the amount of their total taxable income plus the value of their annual pension savings.

Lifetime Allowance – this allowance is reducing to £1 million for everyone. 
Transitional arrangements (for the 2015/16 tax year) and protection regimes (for members who have already built up large pension rights by April 2016) have been introduced by the Government, and it is
important that people are aware of them so they can take action! 
We have spoken to many employees in the sector who could keep a Lifetime allowance somewhat greater than £1 million but weren’t even aware that this was possible. They were, effectively, getting ready to write an extra cheque to HMRC when they didn’t need to!

What Should Employees Do?
There are some actions people could take as a result of the pensions tax changes; for example, many members could increase their contributions before April 2016 or from October 2016, USS members could elect for a voluntary salary cap that is somewhat lower than their actual salary. Some members could apply for lifetime allowance protection based on their current value of accumulated pension savings.
The first step is for members to understand how they are likely to be affected personally by the various tax changes. They will need some guidance to do this, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to pay for costly financial advice if they are just looking to understand the key facts. A number of universities have organised staff presentations to discuss these issues and some have even arranged one to one discussions but without full financial advice. 
To help members who can’t get to a “live” session, mercer’s Higher education group has developed a website which guides employees through all the changes using a simple decision tree and links to a tailored presentation explaining the issues relevant to them personally. The website is designed to be immediately engaging and intuitive – colleagues “pick” one of five profiles they are “most like” and then get to read and hear about issues they may need to consider, the information that is relevant specifically for them and some suggested “next steps”.


More Information
If you have any questions about the pensions tax changes or the mercer website, please contact Michael Harrison. 
You can find more detail on the pensions tax changes by going to www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/budget-july-2015

Over the last few years universities have been raising their awareness of, and increasing their resilience to, the risks of fraud. This has been partly driven by high-profile cases, but also by the excellent work of individual universities as well as the sector’s Counter-Fraud Working Group. The unfortunate truth is that, much like in any large and complex organisation, universities are at risk to fraud from without and within, and have to be diligent and proactive in order to limit the damage to their finances, reputation, and staff morale that fraud can cause.
 
Led by the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG), the Counter-Fraud Working Group represents a range of university professions including finance, audit, procurement, and registrars. It was set up in 2013 following a funding council initiative, and aims to support counter-fraud activities across the sector. It has undertaken a number of projects including a sector-wide fraud-alert system, fraud briefings, and benchmarking surveys. Over the last 12 months the group has stepped-up it’s activity and is working on three main initiatives.
 
The first of these has been the creation of a network of ‘Counter-Fraud Champions’ (CFCs) – a person or persons from every university in the UK who takes responsibility for sharing alerts, raising awareness, and disseminating important information and resources within their HEI. The CFC role varies depending on the requirements of each institution, but the network of now over 250 CFCs receives regular updates from the working group, and contributes to the alert service, surveys, and more. Many CFCs are taking part in the working group’s inaugural HE Counter-Fraud Conference in London on the 29th February.
 
Secondly, responding to requests from members for HE-specific fraud awareness training, the group have worked with 360 Assurance to produce an e-learning module for the sector. The module, located on the BUFDG website, is free to access and is available from the end of February. It’s aimed at anyone who works in a HEI – not specifically in finance or procurement.
 
Finally, also available around the end of February will be a HE-specific counter-fraud toolkit, containing a range of useful resources, which is being produced with collaborators from across the sector. This free kit will be available electronically as well as in an easily photocopy-able printed version. It includes; ‘Introduction to Fraud’ documents; self-assessment and fraud-risk checklists; sample policies including whistleblowing, anti-bribery, and anti-money laundering; special briefings (including fraud and risks in construction, protecting against fraud in overseas activities, and cyber-security and insurance); fraud-awareness posters for institutions; and further links to other electronic resources. 
 
Details of these initiatives can be found at www.bufdg.ac.uk/fraud, and we welcome any enquiries or suggestions that anyone in the sector may have about these or fraud in general. Please contact Matt Sisson, Group Secretary: matt@bufdg.ac.uk, or 01509 228852.

Matt Sisson
Membership and Communications Manager, BUFDG

Another of the exhibitors at the UHR conference, Neyber, writes here about the link between employees’ finances, wellbeing and productivity.

At Neyber, we are exploring a persistent puzzle for employers - the UK’s low productivity levels. Economic growth and growing employment in the UK do not match our businesses’ productivity output which is 25% lower than the other major economies that we compete with. Solving such a complicated problem requires governments and businesses to invest in infrastructure and skills, among other long-term solutions. In the meantime, making sure that our workforces are as engaged and happy as possible can boost our businesses’ productivity levels, at least in the short term. We’re already making a start  and working with closely with universities to help address the issue of employee financial wellbeing in the current climate.

We know that employee wellbeing takes a nosedive when workforce stress levels become dangerously high and that workers experiencing stress in some form will have a direct effect on productivity levels. In the education sector, 42% of employees reported experiencing signs of stress which impede their performance at work.

The financial crisis and the consequent corporate cost control and pay restraints have contributed to these stress levels, with the numbers of education employees reporting financial difficulties over doubling in the decade to 2004/2014. At Neyber we have just conducted large-scale research with over 12,000 respondents and an analysis of the “Understanding Society” longitudinal survey of 40,000 UK households with the Social Market Foundation, which shows that the resulting low financial capability and resilience that many of us have is a significant cause of the high stress levels across the UK.

UK employees are borrowing more to cope with static pay levels and rising living costs by putting into place short-term solutions when cash is scarce. While 24% of us are “just about managing” our finances, rates of indebtedness are rising as we rack up credit card debts or take out payday loans with scandalous rates of interest.

What does that mean for the education sector? Not only are 37% dealing with non-mortgage debts but 24% of employees in this sector have no savings or investments whatsoever. It is this lack of financial balance that leaves employees vulnerable to short-term changes in circumstance and without the ability achieve their long-term savings goals. The results of these financial concerns have left them stressed (38%), having lost sleep (25%), feeling depressed (23%) and being absent from work (6%). Job satisfaction in the education sector has declined by 6% in the last decade and, considering the above, it’s not a big jump to suggest this is in part due to the mental health and distraction implications of ongoing money worries.

At Neyber we believe that giving our employees the tools for financial mindfulness can break this needless spiral of indebtedness and stress. This is crucial as far as productivity is concerned, where the impact of financial stress on the workplace can be dramatic.

There are many causes of stress and productivity is affected by a whole range of issues that influence people. But unfortunately the major taboo that surrounds talking about indebtedness means stress caused by money worries can silently grow in individuals.

The irony here is that personal finances are fundamental to employer-employee relationships. For most of us, our employer is our main or only source of income. And this is one area in which every employer could potentially reduce stress and improve productivity. That’s why Neyber developed a product that helps employers offer their employees more value from their pay-check with access to affordable finance directly from salaries. It’s a simple approach that follows the philosophy that healthy employees are happy employees. Neyber gives employees the chance to address their financial health and consolidate existing debt or simply gain more financial flexibility. Employees using Neyber are reducing their debt repayments by 20% giving them the equivalent of a 5% pay rise. This increases financial breathing room can alleviate the physical, mental and organisational symptoms of financial stress and give the UK healthier and happier employees. 

Monica Kalia 
Co-Founder and Chief of Strategy and Business Development, Neyber

A new business intelligence service has been launched by Jisc and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to support university staff in making the most of the data available to them. HESA’s Jonathan Waller explains how it will benefit the sector.

Development of Heidi Plus involved working with a wide range of higher education (HE) providers and sector bodies. It has involved several in-depth testing phases. It has involved the HESA team redeveloping millions of rows of data. Now Heidi Plus, HESA’s next generation business intelligence tool, is available to users across the HE sector.
Heidi Plus replaces heidi, the web-based management information service that HESA has been running since 2007. The new service is more than a makeover; it is a significant step change in capability and functionality. That’s because it has the ambitious aim of supporting better business intelligence across the sector and making data-driven insights accessible to a wide range of staff, not just data professionals. From late February HR departments will have access to the latest HESA Staff record data through Heidi Plus for research and benchmarking.
Heidi Plus has been created as part of a joint Business Intelligence project between HESA and Jisc. Since its launch on 30 November more than 75% of HE providers have begun the process of signing up for access to Heidi Plus.
The team at HESA has taken care to build the service using the most up-to-date data exploration and analytics software in order to give users access to extensive and detailed HESA data sets. The interactive system gives users the power to creatively analyse and generate insights from the data in a move that should significantly raise analytical capability within universities.
We hope that Heidi Plus will save providers time and money by making it quick and easy for decision makers to directly access the information they need. This can free up time for data specialists to interrogate data in depth and produce striking graphics, maps and visualisations. The system’s flexibility enables analysis of HESA’s official data on students, graduates, staff, finances, business interactions and estates. Jisc will use its Heidi Lab project to experiment with data-driven insights and features that may be migrated into Heidi Plus.
The Heidi Plus system will be freely available to HESA-subscribing HE providers enabling them to gain competitive insights and inform strategic decision-making. Non-profit HE sector bodies can also subscribe to Heidi Plus as an invaluable tool for research, reporting and policy-making. The data in Heidi Plus covers the whole UK HE sector.

To find out more about Heidi Plus and the HESA and Jisc Business Intelligence project please visit www.business-intelligence.ac.uk. For information on how to access Heidi Plus please email the HESA team.

Jonathan Waller
Director of Information and Analysis, HESA

Adapted from original post published at http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk on 30 November 2015

UCEA’s health and safety committee draws representation from organisations with such Bond like titles as HESH, HEOPS, AUDE and USHA; not to mention AMOSSHE.  These organisations are perhaps obscured slightly being often uncomfortably in the HR Director’s peripheral vision but if you do want to know what they do, then there’s loads of information on their websites. What I’ll do in this article though is to explain a bit about the business of the Committee and there’s no better place to start than the meeting on 17 November 2015. 
The Committee forms a critical national interface with the trade unions and in the morning its representatives met the trade unions to discuss issues of the day.  These were then reported to the Committee in the afternoon to inform decisions.
One of the pieces of business before the Committee was to consider UCEA’s next five year strategy and there was just a hint of delight that the Health and Safety Executive were also considering what their next strategy should address.  Whether synchronicity or not,  it was clear that our strategy needed to be drawn up against the themes from the HSE one and so a small working group drawn from a number of representative groups has since set about the task.  While reviewing the action plan for last year however we noted that we had neither received responses to the request for institutions to provide examples of working together with the trade unions on H&S matters nor any willing to share information about HSE inspections they have had. This unwillingness to share information that raises an institutions profile in delicate areas is a theme in all such pieces of work and so it was agreed that a brief survey about HSE inspections would perhaps give at least some insight into where the HSE were wishing to focus.
HEOPS (Higher Education Occupational Physicians / Practioners) (that one’s for free!) presented a report entitled “Guidance on the Provision of Occupational Health Services to HEIs” that gave a practical, insightful and well-reasoned examination and offered guidance about how Institutions could conduct a review about what form their occupational health service should take. Dependent upon where individual institutions are with their present provision this should become a good reference tool for the future.
This is far from being an exhaustive explanation of the business of the day, and I could set here the considerations given to the H&S implications of the Prevent agenda in respect of external speakers and the potential for higher HSE fines for non-compliance both of which have been the subject of recent articles.  The fact that for some people in HR the world of H&S and occupational health feels like a strange country filled with uncomfortably named organisations of which little is known shows that we are in danger of not understanding the critical role these functions play in our organisation’s risk management and overall performance so we overlook them at our peril.  You might now be thinking how you can find out more and refresh your knowledge – well here’s the answer.  This year’s UCEA Health and Safety Seminar, aimed at HR practioners is being held on 10 March 2016 and is entitled “Resilience and Wellbeing”.  Details are on the UCEA website.  

Keith Watkinson, 
HR Director, University of Salford
& UHR North West Group Chair

Bringing together the HR Directors of 16 HEIs is always a challenge but through the course of the year four meetings were held that covered all the usual items of interest to members of the Group. We try to ‘liven up’ the agenda with invited guests which this year included; Pinsent Masons providing a general employment law update, UCEA giving an update on all matters associated with national pay negotiations and highlights of the activities that UCEA offer, TMP describing its new approach to headhunting utilising digital and social media, Veale Wasbrough Visards gave a presentation on gender reassignment discrimination and, Helen Scott, UHR Executive Officer dropped in to see that we are all fully informed about UHR activitiers.
 
The Group ran its first Development Event for ‘many a year’ on 30 October 2015. It was specifically aimed at HR Assistants, Co-ordinators, Officers and took the form of a series of presentations/workshops, with opportunities for networking with like colleagues across the region. The presentations/workshops were mainly delivered by senior HR colleagues from HEIs and covered a diverse range of subjects including: attraction/branding (Lincoln University), unconscious bias (Birmingham University), attendance management (De Montfort University), communicating and influencing styles (NTU) and Bolder HR (Pinsent Masons). 45 people attended from 10 different institutions. It was very well received with the feedback ratings all in the very good/excellent range. Naturally the Group is planning on repeating this later in 2016.

We are pleased to welcome and congratulate the following colleagues taking over lead HR roles. Congratulations to Julie Maughan, confirmed in the HR Director role at Leeds Beckett, to Richard Brooks, taking over as HR Director at Bath in April. Welcome back to Michelle Leek, who has taken over from Geoffrey Etule as HR Director at Cumbria. Jo Brooks replaces John Payne as HR Director at Roehampton. We wish the best for the future to Sheila Gupta, who has left Cambridge, where Emma Stone is holding the fort; Lucy Pow leaving Gloucestershire, where Ruth Davies will replace her; Lyn Meadows, who is retiring from Bangor; Annette Gimbert, who has left Bucks New University; Melanie Whitfield who has left Greenwich School of Management; and Naomi Holloway leaving Hertfordshire.

HR Directors should shortly receive a notice inviting nominations for several roles on the UHR Executive committee. This year, the whole process of nominations and elections will be conducted electronically, via the UHR website, but if you have any questions or difficulties, the process is overseen by Mary Luckiram, currently UHR Secretary, secretary@uhr.ac.uk and the deadline for nominations is 25 March.

Midlands Well-being and Engagement
3 Mar

UHR Group Meeting: M25
9 Mar

[CPD] Delivering Service Excellence - London
10 Mar

UHR South West Event
11 Mar

North West UHR Group Meeting
11 Mar

[CIPD] Strengthening Personal Impact (Sunderland)
7 Apr

[CPD] Delivering Service Excellence - Swansea
14 Apr

Working In Partnership
18 Apr

[CIPD] The Art Of Influencing Line Managers (Midlands regional event)
19 Apr

[CIPD] Power, Politics and Board Influence
20 Apr

[CPD] Solutions for Organisational Success
4 May

[CIPD] Delivering Transformational Change (NW regional event)
10 May

UHR Annual Conference 2016
17 May

UHR Group Meeting: M25
8 Jun

A full list of UHR events can be found here  
 

Various programmes and events that may be of interest to UHR members and their staff are run by the following organisations:
 
Leadership Foundation for Higher Education
Higher Education Academy
Association of University Administrators
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Association of Commonwealth Universities

Midlands Wellbeing & Engagement Regional Event
Council Room, Aston University 
3 March 2016
We would welcome the attendance and contribution from HR, Wellbeing and Health and Safety professionals and anyone interested in the event.

Email Gillian Hancox to reserve your place 


The Effective Laboratory: Scotland
Good Practice and Great Networking to Inform and Inspire
Technology and Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde
1 March 2016
A unique Glasgow Conference is being organised by S-Lab, in association with the University of Strathclyde and other partners and sponsors. It aims to highlight and share good practice in laboratory design, operation and use,
and to strengthen connections between science facilities in Scotland, and beyond.  
Click here to book

Click here for queries


LeanHE Hub Seminar: Manchester
Manchester Meeting Place, University of Manchester
8 March 2016
How can we make change stick in Higher Education? How can LEAN tools and techniques help? What does LEAN mean to Higher Education (HE)? This is a free event for HE professionals organised by the LEAN HEHub.

Click here to book


The Future of HR Summit and Exhibition
University of Salford
16 March 2016
Join us for The Future of HR Summit and Exhibition, where high level speakers from the public and
private sectors will be presenting their views on how to satisfy the changing demands of people
management. Topics covered will include implementing new government legislation, solving retention
problems in the public and private sector, and how specialist software can streamline HR practise.

Click here to book or email Kathryn Wilsher

** 10 free places for the first 10 staff in UHR member organisations that book, with a 50% discount on any other bookings from staff in UHR member organisations when quoting code HR50**


AUA Annual Conference & Exhibition: Creativity, Collaboration & Complexity
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds
21 - 23 March 2016
An unrivalled development and networking opportunity for HE professional practitioners, this year held in the prestigious Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. Join us and over 700 of your colleagues in Leeds to have your say, to learn and to, perhaps most importantly, celebrate the work that you do.

Click here to book


Building Wellbeing and Resilience in the HE Workforce 
Central London
5 May 2016
A healthy workplace is not just nice to have; it is a business imperative in a fast-changing world. A strategic approach to building wellbeing and resilience is fundamental to healthy and productive employees, sustainable business and societies.
Building wellbeing and resilience in the HE workforce taking place on Thursday 5 May in central London will examine how HEIs can develop their approach for maximum impact.

Click here to book


HE Shared Legal: The 'in-house', shared legal service for HE institutions
Manchester Meeting Place, Manchester
24 May 2016
Gain a detailed introduction to the HE Shared Legal service and the experiences of its users. This complimentary event will include:

• an insight into the nature of the service and its operations
• an indication of the benefits to be gained from a subscription to the service
• a chance to question current subscribers about their use of the service to date
• an opportunity to raise current legal topics of concern to the sector
• scope for informal discussion with service personnel

Contact Natalie Hugo to register


ACU HRM Network Conference
Le Meridien Ile Maurice Resort, Mauritius 
16-19 October 2016
The seventh conference of the ACU Human Resource Management Network will focus on the theme of 'HR steps up', reflecting the need for HR practitioners to think of HR outside of its traditional role and more as a key resource in facilitating the achievement of an institution’s organisational goals.

The call for papers is now open until Friday 25 March 2016

Bookings open February 2016

Chair
Kim Frost, University of London

Vice Chairs
Sue Chambers, Aberystwyth University
Sandra Heidinger, University of Strathclyde

Secretary
Mary Luckiram, City University, London

Executive Officer
Helen Scott, UHR

A full list of Executive committee members and of activities and projects in which UHR is involved is available on the UHR website.