Priority 4 - Performance Through Contribution and Growth

To support UCC's long-term ambitions, we must ensure that our organisational structures, systems, and policies are effective and future ready. Effective resourcing is fundamental to achieving our university's mission and strategic objectives. Aligning our workforce planning with the university's goals is essential. We will implement robust resourcing strategies that anticipate future needs, identify critical roles, and develop talent pipelines. This includes comprehensive succession planning to prepare for key position vacancies and ensure leadership continuity.

We recognize the need to proactively address both opportunities and challenges in this area to ensure we have the right people in the right roles at the right time. Balancing workloads is crucial for maintaining staff well-being and productivity. We will assess current workload distributions and implement strategies to manage and optimise them. This may involve process improvements, resource allocation adjustments, and support mechanisms to prevent well-being impacts and promote a healthy work environment.

Digital Skills

To remain competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, we must equip our people with the necessary digital skills. Our strategy includes training and development programs focused on digital literacy, data analytics, and AI adoption. By fostering a culture of continuous learning, we will ensure our people are prepared to leverage emerging technologies effectively. Through these initiatives, we aim to create a digitally empowered workforce that is agile, innovative, and secure. Technology and digital transformation will continue to be a cornerstone of our people strategy, ensuring that our university remains at the forefront of digital excellence. Change management initiatives will provide structured training and ongoing support to help our people navigate and embrace new digital ways of working. By focusing on behavioural and process transformation alongside technology implementation, we will create a workplace that is not only digitally enabled but also more agile, collaborative, and future ready.

Remote Working

The shift towards remote working has created opportunities for greater autonomy and productivity, but it has also introduced challenges in collaboration, team cohesion, and workplace culture. Our strategy will refine remote working policies to ensure they support both the university needs and individual preferences. This includes investing in digital tools to enhance remote collaboration, establishing clear expectations for in-person versus virtual engagement, and ensuring fairness in access to remote working arrangements across different roles.

Key Initiatives

Workforce Planning & Resourcing

• Aligning staffing needs with institutional goals.

Flexible and Agile Workforce Models

• Adapting to evolving academic and professional service needs.

Workload Management

• Ensuring a balanced approach that is healthy, productive and affords opportunity to access activities that stretch and develop.

Succession Planning

• To ensure our people are organisation ready for our future needs and their future ambitions.

Technology & Digital Transformation

• Enhancing digital skills and digital first thinking, AI, and future of work readiness.

Work-Life Balance & Wellbeing

• Promoting sustainable working practices that support staff wellbeing.

What this means for our people and our University

• Workforce planning systems that embed strategic workforce planning into our forward planning.
• Working practices that are not only digitally enabled but also more agile, collaborative, and future ready.
• Balanced workloads so that our people can maintain their wellbeing and productivity.