20 August Update

We have now communicated the final Core Values to the department. 

Taking all of your feedback into account, we arrived at the following five Core Values. We have presented the original version alongside as a reminder of where we started:

What did you tell us and what have we changed?

• Of the 28 individuals who participated in the survey, the majority were generally positive. Most of you felt the Core Values had been changed for the better; you felt they were stronger with 93% feeling they were now representative of the department. You were particularly positive about the addition of the two values related to environmental sustainability and inclusion. 
• A few of you were skeptical of the Core Values in general, questioning the 'uniqueness', 'added value' or were just not 'what you would think of' as Core Values. We have reflected on these comments and whilst we accept this feedback, we think the value and uniqueness really comes in when we come to apply the values in our everyday work. For example, saying we are 'friendly and helpful' may not on its own sound very unique but when we follow this through so that everyone who physically enters our offices or works with us both in person and virtually gets a genuine sense of friendliness and willingness to help out and go beyond the call of duty - this we feel is where our department's Core Values will shine through and speak for themselves. It is a simple case of actions speaking louder than words, but hopefully something we can all follow through and advocate. 
• Several of you still felt unsure about 'We make a difference', saying it was unclear what this meant and could be perceived negatively. We have made a change to this value to reflect your comments and it is now: 'We make a positive difference'.
• In the last round of consultation, you will remember we removed 'We believe in students' as you felt this was unclear and not broadly representative. We also removed 'We step in and help' and added 'helpful' into the friendly value to combine these two values into one. The addition of 'community' gave this value added depth. As mentioned above we created two new values to reflect what you thought was missing regarding inclusivity, the environment, sustainability and diversity

What will we do both now and going forward to embed our values even further?

Here are some ways that we will be publicising and celebrating the ongoing implementation of our Core Values.

Recognition through Awards
You may know we already have the university wide 'Making the Difference' awards which provide recognition of exceptional contributions. We are changing the process in our department to invite nominations throughout the whole year, not just in the run up to the twice-yearly awards ceremonies. The awards in our department will be based completely on our Core Values and nominations will be communicated as we go along; we feel it would be great to celebrate our successes on a more continuous basis. More information will follow soon on the awards and how to nominate, so look out for this. 

Recruitment Process
We will be making a couple of changes to our recruitment process to ensure new members of staff who come into our department can already demonstrate that they can work in line with the values we hold true to our department. We will ensure that applicants have access to our Core Values and will test out their experience either through the application form and/or at interview. We will be working with recruiting managers to make sure this is incorporated into the process. 

General Communications
The wiki pages will act as a central information suppository for anything to do with the Core Values. We will add into here any real examples of colleagues who have demonstrated a Core Value through their work and some practical examples of what the Core Values look like in our day to day work. We will send you links to this information when it is available. We will celebrate our successes and award nominations (see above) through regular staff emails and at our departmental staff meetings from time to time. 

Anything else?
We would love to hear your ideas for how we might communicate and celebrate our values. If you have any suggestions around this, please contact Charlotte; Charlotte.hartley@york.ac.uk.

--------------------------------

14 July Update

Sorry this has gone a little quiet. We have now worked though all of your helpful comments and feedback to produce an amended version of the Core Values. This will be shared with the department very soon through a Google Survey to enable you to provide further comments should you wish. Look out for an email hitting your inbox soon! 

---------------------------------

3 June Update

A big thank you to everyone who has provided comments and feedback on the draft Core Values up to now - more than 25 of you responded through the survey and in the meeting itself which was really great to see. There were some extremely interesting views and helpful suggestions put forward. We are working through all of the comments and will provide an update with next steps shortly. We are also engaging with some further groups of individuals including PHD students and Undergraduate and Postgraduate Reps to gain wider feedback. 

More to follow soon! 

----------------------------------

Introduction to E&G Department Core Values 

During our departmental staff meeting on Tuesday 26 May, we discussed the draft Core Values for our department. 

Key Links

• A video of the staff meeting can be found here:  https://york-ac-uk.zoom.us/rec/share/65J_D-rX2kVJa9LIy0_CeZ56NaK0X6a8h3JPqKALxUxrpTthwILPfKnQdJI3Zmmj (Password: 0s=221F4)
• The full presentation can be found here. 
• Pre-reading material here.

The journey to developing Core Values

• Roland started as Head of Department in October 2019. This came with a new leadership team: Sam Bayley (Department Manager, Director of Professional Services), Nicola Carslaw (Director of Research), Ioan Fazey (Director for Strategy), Claire Hughes (Deputy HoD, Director of Teaching and Learning).

• In November 2019, the Department underwent a strategic review. A series of recommendations for improvements to the Department's strategy and operations were proposed and a detailed action plan was developed to take these recommendations forward. 

• We unveiled a new vision statement in January 2020, and in the past few months we have been working to develop our core values and accountability structure.

• The leadership team have been considering our three-year strategy, and our long-term vision, alongside the University's work in developing its strategy.

• Developing a set of Core Values for the department goes hand in hand with developing the accountabilities framework and strategy for the department. This is all about defining who we are and how we operate as a team.

26 May Staff Meeting

• Roland introduced the session and explained where the values had come. He talked through an SLT 'cloning' exercise where the SLT team worked to develop the draft core values by thinking about characteristics and traits of colleagues that they would like to personally emulate. 
• Ioan proceeded to talk through a PowerPoint presentation. The main parts of this were to explain what Core Values are, why we are introducing them, how they will be used and finally what the draft Core Values are. 
• The draft Core Values shared for consideration in the meeting were:
  

  We believe in students
  We make a difference
  We step in and help
  We are friendly
  We are curious and committed to learning

  
  

• The department were split up into small groups and took part in a short break-out exercise where colleagues were invited to consider if they agreed with the values, currently work to them and if they had any feedback that they would like to share at this stage. 
• Following the breakout session, the full meeting was reconvened and the floor opened for feedback. 
• Some great points were raised by around 18 individuals - a really open and honest dialogue flowed.
• A selection of the feedback covered points such as:
  1.   What does 'believe in students' mean and is this the right language?
  2.   Should there be something in here about being international, cosmopolitan, inclusive or diverse?
  3.   'Friendly' discussed, is this the right language and other ideas such as 'approachable' and 'supportive' were proposed.
  4.   Other suggestions for further values were made, such as 'Working together for a common good.'
  5.   There was a discussion around the distillation of the values into short, sharp sentences and whether they should be longer with more explanation.
  6.   The environment, sustainability and green agenda discussed and there was some conversation around whether these are 'Core' Values or 'Permission to Play' Values (check out the pre-reading for more on this) . 
• Following the feedback session, the next steps were shared: please respond to the google survey to put forward your own feedback and look out for further updates through this page and via future staff meetings. 

Further Feedback and Next Steps

To allow us to collate all of your comments together in one place, please provide us feedback using this very simple google form.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1n1h3izimUzFscGgYI7V4hR62RCjs3cWG_nvYj_359xA

We are very keen to hear from colleagues! Thank you in advance.