Best Practice Awards 

Staff Development Group Best Practice Award 2012

Description

This year’s Staff Development Group Best Practice Award themes are:

• Innovative Approaches to Developing Staff
• Lean Times: Spotlight on Staff Skills Development
• Staff Development Strategies in a Recession
• Quarts and Pint Pots: Making the best of the Staffing Resource
• Role of Staff Development in Rationalisation of Service Portfolios
• Developing Staff: Synergies between Centralised and Distributed Units.

The award aims to focus on using staff development opportunities provided within the everyday life of an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) team in member institutions.  We are particularly interested in receiving submissions that clearly demonstrate efforts that have delivered innovative solutions that have potential applicability within the wider Higher Education sector.   The focus must be on “people benefits” associated with staff development and not specifically upon the successful completion of a particular piece of work. Emphasis on service improvements to the wider University user community must be evidenced.

A successful submission must demonstrate innovation; provide clear evidence of how participants’ skill sets have been enhanced to the benefit of themselves and their institution, and provide appropriate financial evidence to support the theme of the award.

Last year’s Award winner was the University of Lincoln.  A summary of previous Award winners and associated themes is presented in the Annex.

Details of the entry criteria are given below or in this PDF file.

Format

Written submissions, including a 500 word Executive Summary are sought.

Submissions must include the following sections and supplementary supporting materials (as Appendices) are encouraged, for example promotional video clips, presentations on the work etc.:

1. Title
2. Contact details of person making the submission
3. Executive Summary (500 words maximum) clearly emphasizing the staff development outcomes and financial benefits
4. Main section (four sides of A4 maximum) incorporating the following sub-sections:
1. Scope of the activity described
2. Wider relevance
3. Performance indicators
4. Accrued benefits
5. Appendices (if necessary)
   Reference material, background statistics, can be included.
6. Supporting statement. A Supporting Statement made by a manager with responsibility for the activity being presented must accompany each submission.

Judging criteria

Submissions will be judged according to the criteria given below.

Section	Criteria
1. Presentation	Overall clarity of presentation Style of the submission
2. Executive summary	Clear identification of the staff development outcomes achieved by the activity
3. Project Scope	Statement of scope of activities Supporting reference information e.g. urls, survey results, focus group discussion outcomes, etc
4. Relevance	Relationship to wider staff development activity within the IT/IS department Linkages to CPD programmes, probation, appraisal, staff retention initiatives Applicability to other institutions
5. Performance Indicators	What were your objectives? Were these achieved? How were they measured? Number of staff involved? Experiences of persons involved?
6. Project Benefits	Benefits to user community, department and institution How was user experience impacted upon? Were staff career opportunities improved?

Judging Panel and Award

The judging panel will comprise of representatives from SDG, UCISA Executive and an appropriate external contact.

The representative of the successful submission will receive:

• A framed certificate acknowledging the award
• Attendance at an UCISA event to present their work (see below)
• Publicity via the UCISA web page and a press release.

Dissemination of material

A representative of the winning submission will be requested to present their work at the forthcoming UCISA Support Services Conference in July 2012; see http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/ssg/Events/2012/support_serv.aspx . 

Details will be advised upon judgment of submissions and expenses will be borne by UCISA.

All suitable submissions will be made publicly available as Case Study material via the SDG section of the UCISA website.  In making a submission you are formally accepting that UCISA is granted the right to use your submission in this way, and that the material will be acknowledged.

Deadlines

Electronic submissions in Word 2010 or PDF format must be made to the Executive Secretary by Friday 27^th April 2012 via execsec@ucisa.ac.uk.

Annex: Recent Award Winners and Themes

Year	Winner	Theme
2011	University of Lincoln	Embedding a Service Culture
2010	University of Nottingham University of Exeter[1]	Doing More with Less
2009	University of Derby	Thinking out of the box in developing people
2008	University of Nottingham	Opportunities for Staff Development within project management practices
2007	University of Lancaster	Coaching and Mentoring Practices within IT/IS Departments

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