WBS in-house expertise leads to improved service
Latest press releasesWarwick Business School (WBS) has been one of the fastest growing and most successful business schools in Europe and has plans for further significant growth over the next two years. Yet increasing student numbers brings with it increasing burden on the back-office processes essential to support the core services of academic research and learning. So much so that early in 2008 WBS sought a way to improve its operational performance so as to ease workloads and provide capacity for continuous improvement in services.
"With over 300 staff operating across 21 professional and academic groupings we were faced with the real likelihood of work overload for many of our staff. We had to take action and were fortunate to have our own, in-house expert in Dr Zoë Radnor." describes Jenny Hocking, Associate Dean, Planning and Policy.
It was also important to involve an expert independent facilitator to lead the groups through the initial stages of the project and Jules Cross of Processfix was able to assist us with this. "We quickly realised that the academics could make or break the programme" explained Jules. "If we could demonstrate direct improvement for their activities, this would help get them on board".
One opportunity recently publicised in the national press was becoming an increasing issue for many higher education establishments: the provision of assessment feedback to students. Data from the 2007 National Student Survey showed this to be the area with which students were least satisfied, with written feedback often not clear to students, lacking detail and not supplied in a timely manner.
"We were eager to tackle the issue head on" explains Jenny. "Student assessment feedback was the ideal test bed for Operational Excellence as the process touches the majority of teaching groups and programme teams and gave us the opportunity to improve the approach, reduce workload and communicate the benefits across the School".
Working with a multi-disciplinary team including programme managers, academics and administrators, Processfix quickly engaged the team using the fixit® simulation before facilitating their own process improvement. "Given the diverse collection of staff in WBS, with varied backgrounds, experience and interests, it was no mean feat to engage them all", said Jenny.
The focus on involving employees soon paid off as the team took ownership of their own improvement. Through analysing the relevant data, the project quickly uncovered confusion surrounding the lead time in which students receive their feedback, resulting in staff and students having different expectations.
Academics are highly respected within the School and are held in high esteem for their research and teaching. Many of the improvements focus on minimizing non-value adding activities around the marking process. In the old process academics would spend many hours sorting exam papers and negotiating who would be the 2nd marker, all whilst the 28 day clock was ticking.
Numerous quick wins soon became apparent. In the new process papers are sorted automatically before being passed to the academics. This not only significantly reduced non-value adding activity from the process but made the benefits of the new process visible for all.
Negotiation between 1st and 2nd markers has been all but eliminated with both now scheduled at the beginning of the academic year as part of the School's annual academic cycle. "This not only eliminates the need for academics to negotiate between themselves but also provides each academic with a personal schedule enabling them to plan their research activities around their teaching and marking commitments", describes Jenny.
Other improvements involve moving plagiarism checks, previously completed after marking, to the beginning of the process so that any suspicious papers were investigated before marking took place, thus avoiding any potential for wasted effort.
"It is brave for WBS to be commencing on this journey", said Dr Zoë Radnor "To date only a few Higher Education institutions have considered it with less actually embarking on implementation. However, as long as the foundations are put in place and the right support is given then the reward could be great."
"With over 300 staff operating across 21 professional and academic groupings we were faced with the real likelihood of work overload for many of our staff. We had to take action and were fortunate to have our own, in-house expert in Dr Zoë Radnor." describes Jenny Hocking, Associate Dean, Planning and Policy.
It was also important to involve an expert independent facilitator to lead the groups through the initial stages of the project and Jules Cross of Processfix was able to assist us with this. "We quickly realised that the academics could make or break the programme" explained Jules. "If we could demonstrate direct improvement for their activities, this would help get them on board".
One opportunity recently publicised in the national press was becoming an increasing issue for many higher education establishments: the provision of assessment feedback to students. Data from the 2007 National Student Survey showed this to be the area with which students were least satisfied, with written feedback often not clear to students, lacking detail and not supplied in a timely manner.
"We were eager to tackle the issue head on" explains Jenny. "Student assessment feedback was the ideal test bed for Operational Excellence as the process touches the majority of teaching groups and programme teams and gave us the opportunity to improve the approach, reduce workload and communicate the benefits across the School".
Working with a multi-disciplinary team including programme managers, academics and administrators, Processfix quickly engaged the team using the fixit® simulation before facilitating their own process improvement. "Given the diverse collection of staff in WBS, with varied backgrounds, experience and interests, it was no mean feat to engage them all", said Jenny.
The focus on involving employees soon paid off as the team took ownership of their own improvement. Through analysing the relevant data, the project quickly uncovered confusion surrounding the lead time in which students receive their feedback, resulting in staff and students having different expectations.
Academics are highly respected within the School and are held in high esteem for their research and teaching. Many of the improvements focus on minimizing non-value adding activities around the marking process. In the old process academics would spend many hours sorting exam papers and negotiating who would be the 2nd marker, all whilst the 28 day clock was ticking.
Numerous quick wins soon became apparent. In the new process papers are sorted automatically before being passed to the academics. This not only significantly reduced non-value adding activity from the process but made the benefits of the new process visible for all.
Negotiation between 1st and 2nd markers has been all but eliminated with both now scheduled at the beginning of the academic year as part of the School's annual academic cycle. "This not only eliminates the need for academics to negotiate between themselves but also provides each academic with a personal schedule enabling them to plan their research activities around their teaching and marking commitments", describes Jenny.
Other improvements involve moving plagiarism checks, previously completed after marking, to the beginning of the process so that any suspicious papers were investigated before marking took place, thus avoiding any potential for wasted effort.
"It is brave for WBS to be commencing on this journey", said Dr Zoë Radnor "To date only a few Higher Education institutions have considered it with less actually embarking on implementation. However, as long as the foundations are put in place and the right support is given then the reward could be great."
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One of Europe's largest business schools and the largest department of the highly-rated University of Warwick, WBS is fully accredited.
Our teaching is rated excellent and 75 percent of our research is rated at 3* and above, placing us 3rd in the UK.
Over 8,000 students from 130 countries currently study here.
Their interaction with top faculty creates a multicultural learning environment, enhanced by outstanding teaching and study facilities and a top-quality campus.
Our teaching covers the full range of business education, from undergraduate and masters degrees to the Warwick MBA, doctoral research, and executive education.