One of the concerns that I hear most frequently from university senior managers is that they have no idea how members of their academic staff are spending their time. And a common complaint from academics themselves is that the ‘centre’ just doesn’t understand the huge number of different activities that they have to contend with. Workload modelling provides a way to bridge this gap. Continue reading
There is often a tendency to think that any problems within an organisation can be resolved, or any desired improvements made, with the application of a new process or the implementation of a shiny new piece of software. While understandable, this is potentially problematic. Because organisations are not about systems, processes and software – they are about people. Continue reading
As the funding cuts start to bite, things are changing rapidly in local government. But this is only the start. My own local authority, for example, managed to find savings of £17.5m in 2011/12 and needs to identify another £30m by 2015. And if the trend continues, they estimate that they will have to cut expenditure by a further £39m by 2018. This will leave the Council with only half of the resources that it had in 2010/11. Continue reading
I drove down to South Devon last Friday evening and stayed overnight at the Paignton outpost of a well-known budget hotel chain. Arriving at around 8pm, I was pleased to find one solitary space left in the hotel car park. Sufficiently pleased, in fact, that I didn’t even bat an eyelid at the £5 overnight charge. What annoyed me, though, was that I had to scrabble around to find change for the ticket machine rather than just pay at reception. Continue reading
I went to an excellent seminar the other day, in which Bristol City Council’s health and social care commissioning team explained key changes in how they are going to fund various organisations around the city. But while the changes make sense financially and in terms of service user choice, they could spell problems for the provider organisations concerned. Continue reading
