Our calendar photo for August is this lovely photo of Tenby taken by Linda Mason. Linda’s photo was one of our ‘Summer’ winners.

New blog URL

If you have the blog saved as a favourite please update your link to https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/fpnews.  The new link reflects the blog’s recent name change.

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Transforming Lives

At the July Transforming Lives session Leon Etherington (Chief Information Officer) talked about how the implementation of the University’s technology strategy is progressing and what the future holds for HE.

Deborah also presented at the session giving an update on the financial environment.  Deborah talked about how external factors are likely to affect our financial position in the future, and what action the University is taking to ensure our financial stability.  Deborah’s slides and a video of the presentation are now available online.

Non-Pay Savings

One of the actions that the University is taking is to make savings on non-pay spend.  For 2018/19, the aim is to achieve a £4 million saving and budgets have been set on this basis.

The communications about this initiative began with Deborah’s update at the July Transforming Lives session; this has been followed by an email from the VC to all Senior Leaders for cascade through their management team which explains more about the initiative.  Communications to all staff will follow throughout the next few months, and an intranet page has been developed where you will be able to find out more about this initiative; the policies that have been developed so far to help achieve our goal; how progress against our savings target will be shared; and best practice from across the University.

Everyone can make a difference, so please start thinking about ways in which we can save money.  If you need to buy something, challenge yourself (and others) as to whether you really need it, and consider cheaper, alternative options.

Please email your ideas to ! non-pay initiatives.

Finance and Planning Work Priorities 2018/19

A couple of weeks ago Deborah shared our 2018/19 work priorities with us.  The priorities have been defined in a way that can be used to frame your objectives for the 2018/19 period in line with existing activities, strategy implementation plans and business as usual requirements.

NSS 2018 results

The University has achieved 86 percent overall student satisfaction in this year’s National Survey of Students (NSS) – a 1% increase on last year.  You can view the results on The Source.

HR&OD Management Brief

The latest HR&OD Brief is now available to read online.  In this edition:

• Hallam Deal open sessions (1 & 8 August) – progress update and the University’s equality objectives
• HESA annual staff return – Please check and update your personal information if you haven’t already done so.
• The new equality essentials and unconscious bias training modules.
• Stonewall supports Sheffield Hallam with LGBT+ inclusion – Email Hayley Parker to let her know about any work you have done in your area to promote or enhance LGBT+ inclusion.
• Academic Careers Framework (ACF) – Brief overview of the framework and open sessions for staff

Random coffee at SHU

Are you interested in meeting colleagues from other areas? Do you want to find out about other areas?  If so, why not sign up to ‘Random Coffee at SHU’

Random Coffee is a simple idea* where colleagues from across the university are paired up at random each month to meet for a coffee (or another drink) and a chat.  The idea is that this will get us connected with people we wouldn’t necessarily meet through our day to day roles, helping us to make connections and to understand more about our colleagues and the different areas of the university.

* the original idea, known as ‘randomised coffee trails’, was developed by Nesta – the innovation foundation.

Sheffield Bricktropolis

A couple of years ago we had elephants, this year we have LEGO!  Bricktropolis, a series of LEGO-inspired events will be taking over Sheffield city centre from 4-17 August.  Follow the Bricktropolis Trail to find 20 world landmark LEGO models, plus a custom model of Sheffield City Hall.