Changing Processes, Changing People How a core process was radically changed without (many) tears… Liz Hunt Lynsey Hopkins The University of Sheffield Admissions Service July 2016

Introduction

What? • Our project: the Admissions Service going paperless

When?

• Happened over the course of several years • Covered lots of staff and process changes

How?

• Planned as far as possible… • But large elements of making it up!

Now? • Where are we now?

Learn?

• What did we learn? • Advice for those embarking on change

• ‘Takeaways’ throughout the presentation

The Background

Background

harnessing an external driver can help get over lack of internal momentum

Admissions used to be paper heavy

PG processes flabby and labour-intensive

UG based around UCAS

Sector pushed for UCAS paperless ultimatum

External driver gave power when fighting for resource

Making it happen

Some basics: • Getting a good spec makes all the difference (in-

house vs. external systems)

• Don’t reinvent the wheel: once we had built a great PG system, we based our UG system on it

• Review your processes (this provided the internal impetus for getting our PG system built – we realised how much waste there was)

• AUA Good Practice Guide No 43

• Make your case (internal as well as external drivers: in our case, more centralised activity)

• Marshall your resources

The biggie:

communicate!!

Stakeholder engagement

Admissions Service

Admissions Tutors

Computing Services

Senior Managers

Stakeholder engagement: all staff able to give input at all stages, through design, development and implementation

Gaining Momentum

Business as usual?

constraints can be your best friend

PG system made its own argument and gave momentum to UG

Tight time constraints but used this as a positive to aid

prioritisation

Keeping business as usual going is essential and helps

remind us of what is important at every stage

Involve new people as they come along – necessary but

also helpful to have fresh eyes

Momentum

Communications again…

Constant communications over the course of the project

Use a range of channels – forums, meetings, task groups, emails, briefings, newsletters

Open up opportunities for involvement – we used volunteers from junior and senior staff for the project team

Don’t underestimate the drip-drip effect of taking every opportunity to remind and update people about the project

Use communication channels to gain feedback and ideas to constantly feed into project development

More communications…

Making the argument for the project can be easy (our Admissions Service couldn’t wait…)

…but can also be the most difficult part (some Admissions Tutors were worried to the point of tears…)

…so take all concerns seriously and take time to reassure where needed

Think about communication timings, especially around the academic cycle

don’t underestimate the effect of constant drip-drip communications

Implementation

Passing ‘Go’

as they (nearly) say in the military, prior preparation prevents particularly poor

performance

‘UG Online’ was heavily time-constrained – two

weeks to implement between the summer madness and the new

cycle

But, constraints proved our friend again: swift and

effective buy-in, good concentration of

resources, institution-wide focus

Good preparation counts: getting the right rooms for training, providing

‘drop-ins’, having simple but helpful

documentation

We didn’t pilot but would recommend you do!

Did we mention comms?

Good communications remain as essential at implementation point as throughout development

You will never have a better opportunity to get feedback than in the early weeks of implementation

Be ready to tweak your written guides and send out regular operational updates

Feedback loops are essential at this stage – done well, positive reinforcement really beds your system in and moves it on

strike while the iron’s hot and get your feedback immediately and regularly

After the storm

Don’t think you can relax now

embrace continuous improvement

Put in place a system for ongoing development and improvement

Implement formal and informal channels for continuing to gather feedback

Secure resource for after the project is formally completed (easier said than done…)

Be prepared to have to make tweaks and even bigger changes for a long time

Bring your lessons to bear on other projects – we did and got an amazing Confirmation system

Lessons

What did we learn?

3 big lessons

Plan and map as much as you can

Establish your rationale for the project and make the argument

that will give it momentum

Get buy-in at every level and every step of the way – design,

development and implementation

Ongoing challenges and unintended consequences

1 • Once the project is ‘live’ resource can disappear

2 • Working practices can change in unintended ways • People de-skill themselves in the face of good systems

3

• Nothing is forever – our systems may already be reaching the end of their lives

• Moving on from a good system is more difficult than changing from a poor one

Change management models We didn’t use a model, but you might want to

Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze

model

The ADKAR model

Kotter’s 8 step change model

We recommend looking at the model first… We’re about to have massive technology change again and we are going to take our own advice!

Final thoughts harnessing an external driver can help get over lack of

internal momentum

communicate!!

constraints can be your best friend

don’t underestimate the effect of constant drip-drip communications

as they (nearly) say in the military, perfect preparation prevents particularly poor performance

strike while the iron’s hot and get your feedback immediately and regularly

embrace continuous improvement

Any questions? Lynsey Hopkins Head of Admissions l.hopkins@sheffield.ac.uk Liz Hunt Undergraduate Admissions Manager e.hunt@sheffield.ac.uk