Creating a Positive Office Culture
Creating an office culture which all of us are happy to work within and which upholds the principles and practices of Diversity and Dignity at Work is our collective responsibility.
We are a large Division with many strengths, skills and working styles. Our differences are important and make our work place culture vibrant!
A positive culture makes the most of staff capabilities and motivations, nurtures talents and motivations, attracts and retains staff. We embody the culture of our Division and our behaviours shape our environment.
Following group discussions around what constitutes professional behaviours we have drawn on suggestions made from across the constituent SO teams. We will review these each year in order to accommodate proposed changes and improvements.
This information will be included in job application packs and will inform our Recruitment & Selection processes.
Our culture will encourage staff to try new things and to innovate.
We will
- Be courageous, willing to try new things (talking to our line manager and relevant colleagues in advance) and to innovate, not being afraid to make mistakes or of being blamed if things do not succeed as we might have hoped
- Accept feedback which is constructively given in order to learn and develop, deliberately seeking feedback from colleagues with different perspectives
- Feel able to provide constructive and helpful feedback to staff at all levels
- Use all situations as learning opportunities
- Where we need support with having difficult conversations, book to attend the relevant training offered by Organisational Development
- Formally make time to reflect on our performance and learning as central to our practice, capturing this in 1-1s and discussing with our line manager
- Consciously apply our learning to enhance our everyday professional practice
- Engage in both formal and informal learning opportunities, acknowledging that not all learning is achieved through attendance on courses (e.g. reading books, Moodle completion, peer observation, Action Learning Sets, coaching and mentoring).
- Seek opportunities to use and develop our strengths, including those which may not feature in our work areas. This may offer additional benefits of enabling us to become familiar with other teams or different ways of working
- Get involved in work that will stretch us out of our comfort zones
- Be willing to share information on skills and areas of expertise which we would like the opportunity to use
We are aware of our own behaviours and mindful of how these impact both positively and negatively on others.
We will
- Be kind in our behaviours and communications with others- both face to face and online
- Appreciate our diversity and be sensitive to others’ needs, showing respect for colleagues’ different work experience and skills. Contribute to a friendly and positive atmosphere, appreciating the personal contributions people make, whatever form they take
- Be courteous to one another, even when we are busy, and be mindful of the language we use when communicating with colleagues
- Be mindful of colleagues who are working, taking longer conversations and meetings away from desks
- Respect colleagues’ time, checking whether they are OK to talk
- Ask colleagues to take their discussion to a more appropriate space where this is disturbing us
- Be aware of our environment when discussing personal or private information either in groups or on the phone, exercising tact and discretion
- Identify a suitable time to talk if we are busy working
- Try to have a conversation in preference to sending an e mail
- Pause before sending potentially contentious e mails, thinking whether we would say what we are writing in person
- Only copy others into e mails/'reply all’ if they need to know
- Seek alternative space in which to work where we need quiet time to complete a piece of work
- Only use meeting rooms we have booked, remembering to cancel any bookings not needed
- Return rooms to their original layout and take papers/rubbish with us
- Only take equipment where we have booked it out, returning it promptly as others may need it
- Be positive about the university, about one another and our students
- Dress appropriately for the occasion/stakeholders we are meeting/working with
- Be proactive about sharing relevant and useful updates and communicating these with work colleagues
- Be customer-focused- the student experience is our uniting collective driver
- Not be bystanders. If we experience or witness negative behaviour, we will follow the Dignity at Warwick Guidelines, rather than sitting on an issue or discussing it with colleagues
We will be open to engaging with new ideas and ways of working, adjusting to new and unfamiliar situations, shifting demands and changing roles.
We will
- Accept that change is an integral part of life
- Accept that we may experience frustrations and anxiety during times of change and acknowledge that sometimes we will need to live with uncertainty and a lack of clarity, focusing energy on what we can control
- Understand where we may be at any point on the ‘Change Curve’ and respond to our feelings with self-awareness
- Seek support if we are struggling to deal with change, recognising that some of us will take longer to process and accept change than others
- Be open to doing things differently, viewing change as an opportunity to improve and develop our work
- Take as many opportunities as we can to reach out to new colleagues to gain insight into their perspectives as well as sharing our own
- Be constructive when challenging the status quo
We will work collaboratively with others in order to achieve objectives. We will recognise and value the different contributions people and teams bring to Student Opportunity.
We will
- Be curious about what others do
- Identify opportunities to work together and discuss our work
- Reach out to colleagues for support with challenges we may have with a particular piece of work
- Draw on the interests and expertise staff have identified in their online intranet profiles
- Collaborate with others for mutual benefit
- Be respectful of the opinions, ideas and beliefs of others where we may disagree
- Be clear where our responsibility ends and that of others begins
- Consider when circumstances, time or other resource mean that a compromise may be necessary
- Be supportive of colleagues if they are unhappy and encourage take-up of appropriate support services (e.g. Employee Assistance Programme)