Unveiling our new strategic plan

Last week began with our buzzing annual staff conference. The first keynote of the day was from our own Vice Chancellor who was there to launch the University’s new strategic plan for the next three years.

This was a particularly satisfying moment for the Internal Communications team who have been busy over the last few weeks finalising all of the launch communications, including coordinating the design and production of the final strategic plan document and all of the supporting content for our staff intranet.

However, the pièce de résistance of the campaign was a video involving a variety of staff to help explain the essence of our plan and encourage them to get on board.

Our new video stars, who kindly agreed to be filmed on two of the hottest days of the year so far no less, can be seen here: https://youtu.be/ToQWUIEjlvU. I was overwhelmed by how many people were willing to be involved (especially considering the humidity!). Personally being in front of the camera is my own worst nightmare, so I expected a lot more resistance (and the need to employ serious persuasion tactics), but everyone seemed such naturals in front of the camera and took it in their stride.

Why a video?

No matter how good the plan is though, it’s never going to be a success unless our staff buy into it and support it. That’s why we wanted to create a video that aimed to bring to life the mission and vision of the University over the next three years in an inspiring and engaging way.  The video wasn’t supposed to explain the plan in its entirety (we might have had a feature-length film on our hands if that was the case) but be a vehicle for generating excitement for what we want to achieve in the next three years.  Plus by getting so many staff involved, we hoped to create that sense of staff being part of a team, or being part of a family (cue emotional music).

 

Staff will be the judge of whether we achieved that, but hopefully they recognised a few familiar faces, that it provided a few chuckles and that perhaps it got them intrigued to read more about the plan.

Why a Z card?

We all know that Strategic Plans are probably not everyone’s idea of a good read, and we are all extremely time poor, however we were keen to ensure that staff were clear on our direction of travel, even if they hadn’t read the entire plan. That’s why we also created a nifty pocket-size z card version of the strategic plan providing a bite-size summary of the key goals and measures. Everyone will get their personal copy, plus staff can read the strategic plan in full here.

We’re not complacent though, and always looking for feedback to ensure that we continue to improve communications to staff. If you have any feedback that you would like to share then please email internalcommunications@beds.ac.uk.