Organising for Success brings together work that will empower staff to transform our students lives, helping us meet our Kent 2025 strategy and ensure a future we can be proud of.

Following changes to Executive Group and appointments to key senior roles, next week (w/c 20 January) we will begin consulting with senior leaders in central professional service directorates on a revised leadership structure to support the new divisions. We have recently updated the FAQs section of the website to cover feedback around this following our update in December.

Other activity underway across the project includes:

Professional Service / Division Workshops

We are currently organising a series of workshops with senior central professional service managers and our new Directors of Operations, which will begin the process of establishing a new operating model for divisions and professional services, along with defining the relationship between the two. These ‘kick off’ workshops will incorporate the work of Strand 3 and Strand 4 of Organising for Success, focusing on which activities and decisions fall where, along with capturing the processes we need to consider ahead of launching our new academic divisions.

Alongside this, we are currently making changes to the governance structure of the project to reflect the overlap between the two strands and recent staff changes, which will be shared more widely once they have been agreed with the Oversight Group.

Directors of Operations

The latest allocation of Directors of Operations to academic divisions is as follows:

Division of Humanities: Kerry Barber

Division of Natural Sciences: James Redmond

Kent Business School: Paul Verrion

Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences: John Crook

Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice: Rachel MacPhee

Recruitment to the remaining posts is ongoing. There is more information on the Transitional Arrangements section of the Organising for Success website.

‘Town Hall’ events for managers

We will shortly be holding a series of ‘Town Hall’ meetings for managers on the changes underway at the University through both Organising for Success and our wider financial recovery plans. These are designed to give those with significant line-management responsibilities a full understanding of the planned changes and their context, along with tips and resources to help with communicating with their teams. Learning and Organisational Development will be coordinating the sessions with support from the Organising for Success project team and will be communicating the details shortly.