Transforming the Culture with UCL’s Campus Experience & Infrastructure Team

Taking the time to collectively articulate and embed shared values, beliefs and behaviours can support employee engagement and well-being which, in turn, can positively impact business outcomes.

‘It was great working with Strive Higher. From day one, they understood the challenge and supported me and the wider team to keep focused on what we were trying to achieve. Numerous people fed back to me that Strive Higher made themselves available to talk about small personal stories (of culture) which I think collectively helped them understand what we were trying to develop. They were great value for money and ultimately have helped us move our culture forward in a positive direction.’

- Ian Dancy, UCL Executive Director of Operations

The brief:

UCL's Campus Experience & Infrastructure (CE&I) Team comprises approximately 350 staff spread across the UCL estate. Strive Higher was commissioned by the Executive Director of Operations, UCL in 2021 as the University prepared to welcome students and colleagues back to campus, post-COVID.

Strive Higher was engaged to help the directorate address a sense of disempowerment and fragmentation within the CE&I team post-COVID and to help ensure the necessary capabilities were reflected within the directorate to support the newly appointed Provost’s vision for UCL’s campus experience to be a prominent selling point for the University.

Our approach:

Working closely with the department’s Leadership team and Culture Champions, Strive Higher co-created a vision for the directorate. Focus groups were held with all teams to reach a collective view of both the current culture state, and the target culture state.

With full consideration of the concerns of the institution post-pandemic and particularly in relation to staff wellbeing, Strive Higher was keen give the staff community space to have their voices heard, and to help create an environment in which staff involved could embrace and champion the change process. Our approach resulted in a robust and evidence-based gap analysis and a resulting set of recommendations to the leadership team to help support them with the next steps.

We coordinated a suite of culture and behaviours workshops, which were held and attended by stakeholders across the department. These sessions established the preferred behaviours in support of the new target culture, resulting in a set of pledges that colleagues made to one another to foster the desired culture. This was fundamental to ensuring staff were invested in the cultural change required.

Throughout this project, we utilised our expertise in coaching and staff development to support individuals and teams to understand and embrace new ways of working and gain buy-in.

Outcomes:

• Staff collaboratively engaged in the development of design principles for a new directorate

• Co-created set of preferred behaviours in support of the target culture

• A clear, consistent and compelling vision for the target culture co-created with the wider team

• An energised, equipped and empowered team of culture champions working at local, middle management and leadership levels to champion, measure and guide change

Read more about our Strategy Development and Transformation & Change service offerings.