Newcastle University
Background
As part of a change project to drive the development of a customer focused service provision, Red22 designed and delivered a significant skills audit across the Estates function. This included the development of a Success Factor framework which has a practical approach to defining behaviours that will deliver success within the workplace. It was originally developed to help the skills audit process define exactly what behaviours needed to be improved/developed.
Following this, Red22 and Newcastle University were granted a Fellowship Award and Red22 worked alongside the Staff Development team at Newcastle University on a variety of projects. These projects will contribute significantly to the development of high quality support services to enhance the academic administrative partnership in leadership and management, one of the Newcastle University 2006/7 goals.
Issue
Newcastle University recognises that in order to provide excellent support services there is a requirement to develop junior/middle managers who have the potential to become leaders within their sector.
Red22 Solution
Red22 carried out extensive research to establish what observable skills, knowledge and behaviours key stakeholders within the University felt were required by the administrative support function in order to achieve success. Research methods included critical incident interviews, repertory grid interviews and focus groups. Building on the existing Success Factor framework that was developed for the Estates Support Services (ESS), Red22 designed a competency framework, which identifies and defines successful behaviours for administrative and support services function. The framework will become the backbone for a number of human resources processes, including assessment processes for recruitment and development. This includes a development centre for middle management with exercises and activities that will clearly measure all elements of the success factor framework, assessor and delegate information packs and short workshops on assessor skills and the development centre process. For recruitment processes, structured behavioural interviews and activities that measure all elements of the Success Factor framework were developed for middle management plus information packs for interviewers and training/support in selection skills and the selection centre process . |
