Service Excellence

We’ve heard feedback that tells us the University environment is overly complicated, and it can be time-consuming and stressful for our colleagues and students to get the support they need. Improvements are therefore needed to make our services more effective and efficient.

There is also growing financial pressure in the Higher Education sector which means we must ensure we are using our resources as effectively as possible. Service Excellence is therefore one of a number of ways in which the University will be more cost-conscious and generate savings where possible. You can read more about the University’s financial position in this blog from the Principal

Ultimately, this programme is about building a better everyday experience for our staff with simpler processes, clearer responsibilities and better support across the board.

Right now, many of our services and processes are more complex than they need to be. It’s often unclear who owns which part of a process, how policies should be put into practice, or even where to go for the right support. In some cases, things are done differently across teams or areas, even for the same task, and it can feel like you need to ‘ask the right person’ to get help. The Service Excellence will therefore work towards four clear goals:

• Easier to navigate and simpler services
• A consistent experience for staff
• Services that are more efficient and effective
• Financially sustainable services

The Service Excellence programme is sponsored by our Principal, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli and will be handed over to our incoming Principal Professor Andy Schofield in October, 2025.

The programme is governed by a board with leadership from David Duncan, Chief Operating Officer & University Secretary, acting as Business Owner. The board, which has representation from both academic and professional services colleagues, is responsible for making sure the programme stays on track, delivers what it sets out to do, and aligns with the University’s wider goals. It provides oversight, guidance, and challenge where needed.

The programme is managed by the Transformation Team, which has capabilities in a range of relevant areas including service design and project management. They will bring together specialist teams of professional services leaders to support the work as required.

There will be two main types of activity, which will run at the same time.

1. We will develop a set of Service Excellence Standards that reflect best practice and place our students and staff at the centre of our service design. These standards will make sure our professional services are clearly defined, use better data to track performance, and regularly gather feedback from staff and students to keep improving. Services will be assessed against these principles to highlight what’s working well and identify opportunities to improve, ensuring we meet the standards consistently across the University.

2. We will also carry out a series of reviews to help identify further ways to make our professional services simpler and more efficient. To support this, we’ve developed a University of Glasgow Capability Model. This gives us a high-level view of all the key things our professional services need to deliver for the University to meet its goals.

   This approach follows best practice recommended by UCISA (the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) and helps us see where our service delivery is currently fragmented and what that means for the staff and students who use those services.

   Using this model, we can begin to explore the different activities that sit within each capability and how they are delivered across the University. Each area will be looked at in turn to spot opportunities for improvement and build a clearer picture of how we work today.

Every capability area will have a designated Review Lead (a current professional services leader in the University, with experience associated with the relevant capability area). They will work with other professional services colleagues and members of the Transformation Team to identify improvements, by drawing on input from academic and student communities.

Each review will follow the same approach, starting with a set of key questions to understand what our activities look like now and what changes are needed. These include: What are the current processes? Which policies might need updating? Do our IT systems need to change? What should happen at University, College, and/or School level? Will the way we are organised need to change? And what savings might be possible?

As part of designing the future state, we will also make sure there is clear ownership of our processes. This means identifying who is responsible for the various sequences of activities that help us achieve particular goals, and making sure their role is clearly understood across the University.

During summer 2025, the programme will focus on continued improvements to our UKVI activities, as well as improvements within our Student Wellbeing Services. In parallel, we will work with our professional services leaders to identify which areas to prioritise next.

Over time, the programme will look at all areas of capability, and therefore all of the work delivered by  professional services colleagues.

We know it’s important that these workstreams are joined up, not just for clarity but to avoid unnecessary pressure on staff.

In practice, when the workstreams will be delivered together, we will make sure that activity and solutions happen at the same time. Colleagues won’t experience them in isolation or have to adapt to one change only to face another soon after.

To help get this right, we’re running a pilot over the summer within our wellbeing and UKVI support services. This will allow us to test the approach and learn what works best in practice.

We’ll use what we learn to shape how we deliver the work more widely, with the aim of minimising disruption and ensuring the process is manageable and meaningful for the teams involved.

There will be several ways for colleagues to help shape how we improve our services.

Review Leads will set up working groups with people who have relevant experience and may contact individuals directly to take part.

We’ll also be focusing on user research, which means taking time to listen to the people who actually use our services to understand what’s working well and what could be better. This will help the teams designing changes to hear directly from a wide range of voices, so that the improvements we make are based on real experiences and needs, not assumptions.

There will be opportunities to take part in this by joining user research panels where you can share your views, which will then be used by the working groups to ensure they are drawing on insights from colleagues and student communities. We’ll share more details soon on how you can get involved and have your say.

The Service Excellence programme will run for the next two years.

From now until the end of 2025, we’ll be working closely with leaders across our professional services to review existing activity and identify opportunities for improvement.

In the first half of 2026, we’ll build on that work by developing detailed plans for the changes we want to make. We aim to share the outcomes of this planning by September 2026 and begin implementing the changes shortly after.

We expect the planned changes to be fully introduced by June 2027.

The project team will bring together professional services leaders across the University, to look at how we currently deliver our services, and how we can improve this. They will hear feedback from a range of voices (including both staff and students) on how our services are currently working, and they will work with specialists to identify ways to our services simpler to access and easier to navigate for our staff and students. This could generate savings by simplifying processes, standardising ways of working, making better use of technology and looking at how our staff are organised, all of which can help us avoid unnecessary costs.

The University is in a position of relative strength, compared with some of the institutions which have been hardest hit by the financial challenges in our sector.

However, we are not immune to these and it’s important that we continue to make the right decisions to protect the institution in the future.

 A number of initiatives are therefore underway (including Service Excellence) to help us manage our resources more effectively, find savings where we can, and reinvest in what matters most for the University’s future.

We expect there will be a need to make some structural changes over time. This may include upskilling staff and redeploying them into alternative roles or teams as new ways of working are identified. As with any restructuring we are committed to minimising the risk of any redundancies wherever possible

Regardless of the nature of the change, we will be upfront about this as early as possible and any changes will be subject to our Management of Organisational Change policy, where required.

Structural change is just one of a number of means we will consider, including different ways of working, automation, introduction of different technology, changes to IT systems and policies, and process improvement.

Dedicated training and transition support will be provided to support staff through any changes.

Yes. Ongoing and transparent engagement with our trade union representatives is something we do in relation to all activity across our Transformation portfolio, and Service Excellence is no different.

Union representatives have been briefed on the programme regularly over the last year, and we will continue to engage with them via the JCCN forum, so they can best represent their members’ views and input to any  change proposals and the approach we may adopt to implementing these.

If you have a question, concern or idea to share about any aspect of the Service Excellence programme, please complete our Service Excellence Feedback Form.

Once we receive your query, we’ll make sure it’s directed to the most appropriate person. This could be:

• The Review Lead for the area most relevant to your role or question
• A College Transformation Business Partner who acts as a link between the colleges and the Transformation Team
• A P&OD Business Partner who can offer tailored support or development based on your needs

We’re here to listen and respond. Your feedback helps us shape this work in a way that works for everyone.