A year in Focus

As the Focus Programme celebrates its third anniversary, I’d like to thank everyone who has supported or participated in our initiatives over the last year. 

It’s been a time of significant challenge and change – yet also of great opportunity. Early in the pandemic we redeployed Focus practitioners into projects supporting the University’s Covid response. And it has proved to be an essential enabler; if anyone was in doubt of the worth of an in house change management team read on!

Here are some examples of how Focus has worked with teams across the University over the last year: the common theme is that the skills of our practitioners simply make it easier and quicker to organise design and implement an improvement project.  

Our student-facing services have had so many novel situations to navigate, and yet have delivered time and time again and have worked to what have seemed impossibly short deadlines. Where Focus has been able to partner with teams in these rapid-reaction situations, it has proved a very powerful combination indeed.

The Teaching Space Coordination Project was a real example of ‘one Oxford’ working and enabled access to teaching space availability and booking systems in response to the general need for bigger spaces to accommodate social distancing. The project built systems for sharing space, where these had not existed before, meaning that teaching space needs could be met within existing facilities.

Another crucial project was that of the Christmas Covid-19 Travel Testing for students. The system was up and running across the University in just 3 weeks, with a delivery team of experts around the University mobilised and coordinated by Focus. Not only did this ensure students could safely return home it also provided an incredibly useful snapshot of cases within the University at that time.

Focus also helped the Undergraduate Admissions Office in the rapid creation of a virtual-working solution for Undergraduate Admissions Tests. And then as the University prepared for the arrival of an unexpectedly large intake of graduate students, Focus with Graduate Admissions and Recruitment brought about the swift operational launch of a service to help graduate students find accommodation.

In other University-wide initiatives, Focus has been giving staff a voice on Health & Safety, improving the University’s recruitment data and running showcase events for colleagues as part of the University’s initiative to achieve greater diversity in the recruitment of Associate Professors to Oxford.

The Professional Services’ New Ways of Working project is also benefitting from Focus input, as we create a system to ensure that as we flex our ways of working on site and remotely we have a fair and effective framework to ensure we work effectively and collaboratively whether we are at home or in the office.

The University is firmly committed to making the Continuous Improvement (CI) methodology a part of our everyday working culture, so Focus has established a permanent team in conjunction with a University-wide network of Associate Practitioners to help share, devolve and embed CI skills and tools across our organisation.

Do look out, later in the year, for communications from Focus about developing CI culture and how you can get involved. In the meantime, take a look at the Focus Online Toolkit which will give you a taste of some of the most popular and easy-to-use Focus tools in a format that you can try out within your team without prior experience. It is wonderful to see how teams are already embracing Focus tools and approaches, with Student Registry, NDORMS and Bodleian Admissions Team being a few examples.

After a challenging year, it feels exciting to be looking ahead with optimism with these new tools and skills to make improving how we work easier and more rewarding.

I hope you will feel inspired by what the Focus Programme offers, and if you would like to explore any ideas with the Focus team, please contact them via email: focus@admin.ox.ac.uk

Best wishes,

Gill Aitken

Registrar
Executive Sponsor, Focus Programme