Welcome to our first Board Sketch

23 Feb 2022

Designed to give you a little more insight into each of the Board of Governors meetings as part of our broader communications package

Welcome to the first Board Sketch which is designed to give you a little more insight into each of the Board of Governors meetings.

The Board Sketches form part of a broader communications package to bring to life the work of the Board with an aim to:

• let you know more about its members;
• create a better understanding of its role and what it does (and doesn’t do). 

It is also in line with one of the recommendations from the independent Halpin review into the University’s governance which was undertaken in 2021. It is important to say that the Board Sketches are intended to give a flavour of the topics covered within the meeting and in no shape or form replace the formal minutes.

The Board Meeting on Wednesday, 16 February was held for the first time in the Henry Royce Institute.

A welcome to the Royce and direct student feedback

Ahead of the formal Board meeting itself, members of the Board of Governors had the opportunity to look around the Royce, the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation, and hear about some of the world leading work.

There was a pre-board discussion between board members and a wide-ranging group of students (the group arranged by our Student’s Union). The themes discussed ranged from aspects of the curriculum, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion to student support services and facilities. There will be further consideration of feedback received and how this will be incorporated into plans and actions.

A significant agenda and wide range of voices and viewpoints

The formal Board of Governors meeting lasted for three hours with 21 items and a plethora of Committee Reports to consider, ranging from measuring performance, our approach to and successes in innovation, through to the University’s financial performance, responses to an external stakeholder survey, governance effectiveness and Board skills.

Managing large scale, content heavy meetings whilst keeping to time, allowing good debate, and making key decisions is no mean feat and is the responsibility of Board of Governors Chair, Edward Astle. And it’s great to be able to say, a range of voices was heard across all of the agenda items with all members around the table and on video conferencing actively questioning, commenting, challenging and raising their own ideas from their very different perspectives.

And those perspectives are broad – generating lively and constructive debate.

In total, we have 23 Board members; 13 lay members (from a range of different external organisations and backgrounds, six members from our Senate, one from Professional Services and two members from our SU including Melody Stephen, General Secretary of the SU, who importantly provides the student voice. Nancy Rothwell and Melody are ex-officio members. Added to that various of the University Officers were at the meeting including Patrick Hackett, Luke Georghiou, John Cunningham and Mark Rollinson. The meeting was also attended by Natasha Traynor, an Associate Member of the Board.

Five Board Committees (Audit and Risk, Finance, Nominations, Remuneration and Staffing) report into the board meeting alongside Senate, the Planning and Resources Committee of the University and the University–Students’ Union Relations Committee.

So, there’s a lot going on at these meetings and an enormous amount of ground is covered.

As you would expect after the formalities of opening the meeting, things really begin with the President and VC’s report which included topics such as:

• the development of Innovation Greater Manchester
• current state of COVID on the campus
• industrial action and the USS pension discussions
• senior University appointments
• looking after the small numbers of students we have from the Ukraine
• nominations opening for the election of the next Chancellor
• our financial sustainability and the outlook for our widening participation programmes in the next academic year.

A few areas of detailed debate

The Board were asked to approve the new framework and key performance indicators with the Performance Report presented by Matt Atkin and Alison Fairclough. While there remains some fine tuning around teaching, student and staff satisfaction, EDI and People and Organisational Development, the core framework was agreed.

An Innovation performance report led by Luke Georghiou (the report provides the Board the opportunity to hold executives accountable for performance against KPIs over 12 months), kicked off with our goal which is to be the best University in Europe for innovation. While by most measures we are within the top 10 already, creating a record of 13 spin-outs through the Innovation Factory, delivering a record year for licensing, and progressing with Northern Gritstone, there are always risks in the innovation field. The board debated those risks, considered how we could use more work from Humanities as well as STEM subjects, be better in creative industries, and appeal even more to students and SMEs.

The Board also received a mid-year update on the University’s financial performance which has remained stable with a cautiously optimistic outlook for the remainder of the academic year, in spite of the continued headwinds which are generally impacting the HE sector and the evident inflationary pressures. A key issue which the Board highlighted is the need to increase understanding, internally and externally, of the requirement to create a sufficient surplus for investment to allow us to support staff and students and deliver on our strategy.

The Board also discussed our biennial independent external stakeholder review among a range of key decision makers, locally, nationally and internationally (running since 2005). In spite of the undoubted challenges that we have faced throughout the pandemic, the results were the most positive we have received. There was a wider spread of positive comments about our teaching and research, business engagement and innovation, civic partnerships and our campus. While our work in science, engineering and health remained prominent, it was good to see praise for activities in humanities and the work of the museum.

A paper was considered which asked whether the make-up of the Board itself offered the right skills to effectively work across the various board committees and provide the support and challenge that the University requires. It also looked at how to continue to improve diversity, building on the steady progress made. In light of that discussion, and the skills of the board members departing in the summer, it was agreed to seek someone with financial and commercial experience to maintain those skills on Finance Committee, and someone from the FE sector, given the importance of the civic alliance and the levelling up agenda. As usual a combination of headhunter and advertising will be used to maximise the diversity of the shortlist.

At the end of the meeting, without VC or other executives present, the Board considered the summary of the VC’s thorough performance and development review, noting the positive overall assessment and her proactive response to feedback where areas of concern were raised, factoring them into her priorities for the year ahead.

The next Board of Governors meeting is on Tuesday, 22 March.