Organisational Change of a Professional Services Team in a Research & Teaching Department - Siân Lunt, University College London

1. Organisational Change:
Case Study and
Learning Points
UCL Mechanical
Engineering
ucl.ac.uk/mecheng
Sian Lunt
Departmental Manager
Sian.lunt@ucl.ac.uk
@LuntSian
uk.linkedin.com/in/sianlunt
AUA Managing Change in HE
Faculty of Engineering Sciences

2. Learning Points
• How different people react to change
• Techniques for buy in
• How to cope with dissatisfied staff
• Settling down a team after change
• Successful away day encouraging
communications and planning
• Anything else you want?

3. What is change?
• External drivers for change, we react to with some strategic planning
• Internal drivers for change, driven by us and planned for
External changes
• Dowling Review of Business-
University Research Collaboration
• Science & Technology
Parliamentary Select Committee
Budget
• Review of Research Councils
• Government’s Spending Review
• TEF – search gov.uk
• 6 publications from BIS
in May 2016 alone
• Brexit
Internal changes
• Business process improvement
• New systems going live
• Office Moves
• New leadership
• A member of the team moving on
• New staff starting / new
personalities to get used to
• The pen you prefer to use no longer
being ordered
• Planned, controlled organisational
change

4. AUA Good Practice Guides
“Change is a constant
feature of higher
education. With changes
in administration,
systems, technology,
students and funding”
“Managing change may be
defined as making changes…
with the aim of implementing
new methods and systems
whilst maintaining ongoing
business”
“Restructuring and
reorganisation are
stressful for all… the
staff involved present
the largest and most
coherent challenge…”

5. AUA Good Practice Guides
As tools to open
discussion with staff
Change as
something you can
drive and is normal
Emotions as part
of the our working
life, impact & raised
self- awareness
NOT during change –
before = normal

6. UCL Engineering
is….
UCL MechEng
Est. 1847
First chair in Mechanical Engineering in England
There is a happy ending!
@UCLEngineering

7. Timeline
• First Department Manager for the Department
• Identifies PS under staffed and not delivering to institutional standards
• Students & Academic numbers grown without growth in PS staff numbers
• in 10 years UG numbers had grown by 62%, PG by 64%
• New Head of Department due to join in Sept 2013, change to be
implemented by that date
• 28 days for consultation (institutional guidance, not statutory)
• Tempting to make this as long as possible – don’t
DM starts
Oct 12
Consult
May 13
Bus Case
March
2013
Change
starts
August 13
New Head
Starts
Sept 13
Revised BC
June 13

8. Organisational Charts – Before and After

9. Office Rationalisation
• Based in 3 separate locations, many with private offices
• All in one shared open plan office
(Except IT)
• First away day, prior to move
concentrated on how to share
the space
• Not full participation

10. Main Problems
• Buy in can be difficult
• New manager driving change, how to build trust in your judgements
• Do you have the right balance of time for consultation and time of uncertainty?
• Consultation must be genuine, all queries from staff directly involved must be addressed
• There will always be someone who does not engage fully
• Emotions will run high
• Everyone will have an opinion
• Support PS manager position very important from trusted management positions
• Scenario planning essential, but you won’t think of everything
• There will be rumours
• Misinformation is inevitable and not always malicious, but needs to be addressed where
confidentiality concerns allow

11. Different Reactions to Change
Strongest voices
• Change of line management
• Lack of privacy for confidential work (loss of own office)
• Given management responsibility
• Perception of lack of genuine consultation
• NOT those at risk of redundancy
Conversations post-changed, enabled by a change of
management elucidated deeper reasons for those reactions
Mostly historical reasons - some very specific to the department,
others very specific to UCL

12. Away Day: September 2014
• How to be a team
• There will be a very shortly weekly Monday morning meeting to bring everyone up to speed on
what is going on, who is where etc. This can be held in the professional services meeting space
• Headphones will be allowed in the office but not when working on reception. They will be
removed as soon as a visitor approaches someone’s desk
• No food will be left on the desks overnight
• Phones will be on group pick-up and will always be picked up by members of the relevant sub-
team. Members of other teams can pick up if they wish but should not feel obliged to.
• The Professional Services meeting room should have telephone for private calls
• People can have their own individual fan and / or heater
• All team members should aim to be as paperless as possible so that space is utilised well
• Everyone should keep their Outlook calendar updated and share with all the team

13. Change Became Further Change…..
….. and this is when I enter
initially as Maternity leave cover

14. Team coming to the end of the
forming period: 2 posts vacant
Then focus was to make the storming
period as short as possible
• Leadership – consistent messages
• Transitioning to a coaching
management style
• Context to academics
• Carefully planned away day
February 2015: What I inherited
•Tuckman, Bruce (1965). "Developmental sequence in small groups".
Psychological Bulletin 63 (6): 384–99. doi:10.1037/h0022100

15. Away Day: September 2015
• Problem
• Diverse team (Comms/Teaching/IT/HR/Finance/Grants)
• Delivering on many very different aspects = a vast variety of styles and characters
• Controllers were trying to organise creatives
• Clashes were escalating in frequency
• Solution
• Myers Briggs Type Indicator to open up dialogue on personality / style
• Raise awareness of different personality preferences
• No one is right or better, just different
• Also – the morning was a reflection on the past year and how far they had come

16. Away Day: September 2015
Timings Session
9.00 - 9.30 Arrival and refreshments
9.30 - 9.45 Welcome, introductions, team contract
9.45 – 10.00 Icebreaker
10.00 – 11.00 Where the team has a) come from, b) where it
is now and c) Mechanical Engineering
Professional Services - Outline Team Plan going
forward
11.00 – 11.15 Coffee
11.15 – 11.30
11.30 – 12.00
Analysis of team changes needed to deliver
actions from Mechanical Engineering
Professional Services Outline Plan
Action Planning
12.00.12.30 MBTI Type as Marvel Character
12.30 - 1.15 Lunch
1.15 – 1.45 Mechanical Engineering as Marvel Characters
1.45 – 2.45 Team Presentation on which character they
prefer and why it’s like them?
2.45 – 3.00 Tea
3.00- 3.45 Implications for our team of Marvel cartoons
3.45 – 4.00 Action Planning/Evaluation/Close
Humorous
Fun discussions to allow
honest and open
reflection
Serious
I actually saw the
lightbulb moments on the
faces of some of the team

17. Outcomes
Morning session
• Lists of successes to date
• Ideas for better working together
• Improvements to office environment
• Action points with named champions
Afternoon session
• Increased cooperation and understanding
immediately
• Short-cut for conversation when tensions do
arise – “remember at the away day when
we…”

18. Further Change Became More Change

19. Smaller change is now normal practice
• Staff left and were replaced by promotion – positive for morale
• Cross cover during holidays enables supervision of temps during
periods of recruitment to protect core services
• New roles are the most challenging as who does what gets
embedded into practice, but welcomed (reception)
• Still internal / external changes
• New research grants software rolling out
• New admissions procedures being designed centrally
• HR department undergoing Organisational Change
• Professional Services across Institution being reviewed
• Brexit – uncertainty is potentially derailing

20. HR Context Vital
• Strong HR Advisory Services & Occupational Development teams
• Bespoke designed and delivered team building & training available
delivered for free to departments(OD)
• Institution-wide training designed with the vision to enable renewal
and change (OD)
• Flexibility, cooperation and forward thinking embedded in Core
Behaviours (AS)
• Support for review of change (AS)

21. New Leadership Helped
• Enabled the transition to coaching style of management more quickly
• Allowing space to offload frustrations
• Moving forward message not taken as criticism
• Shortened storming phase
• Listening allows you to hear problems sooner to take action
• Consistent leadership messages between two different managers led
to reflection on past actions
• Staff-driven review of processes empowers staff and embeds change
as normal

22. Prepare Yourself
• The most sound business case will not persuade everyone
• Introspection is important to prepare yourself to drive change
• Check your motives
• Check your belief that this is the right thing to do
• Check your managers support the change fully
• Get your support systems in place
Your conviction and consistency of message from
managers will be more persuasive than anything else

23. SWOT
Analyse whether you are in the best position to
start change - prepare fully
Identify possible pitfalls / opportunities early on

24. Big win
Academic staff who opposed the change have consistently praised the
new team and the work that is done in support of their work
“The team are really brilliant and doing such a good job, I don’t think
anyone envisaged how much of a difference this would make to the
department” Prof X
With thanks to the HR team, the Faculty Manager, my predecessor
Most importantly – my super team!

25. Thank you
Any Questions?
Sian Lunt
Departmental Manager
UCL MechEng
Sian.lunt@ucl.ac.uk
@LuntSian
uk.linkedin.com/in/sianlunt