DDAR, Service Excellence Workshops in Development Services

Alignment to PS ambitions:

Background: The Development Services team in DDAR (Development and Alumni Relations) is responsible for enabling fundraising, volunteering and alumni engagement. During 2023-24 the team experienced significant changes to staff personnel and the loss of our core database 'Raiser's Edge' following the cyber incident. This also impacted DDAR's preparation for the University of Manchester's University’s first fundraising and volunteering campaign in 2025.

To navigate these challenges and foster service excellence, the team worked with Learning and Organisational Development (L&OD) and an external consultant to design and deliver a series of workshops focused on service excellence for the team. These workshops focused on empowering colleagues, were structured as participatory programmes as opposed to 'training' to foster more inclusive learning environment, they focused on development of skills and approaches that the team could quickly adopt. The workshops were tailored programme that focused on scenarios submitted by the team as opposed to generalised ones.

The workshops incorporated wellbeing and allowed colleagues the space to influence and manage their own workloads. Another example of how we tailored the programme to suit the needs of the team was through enabling the slides and live contributions to be made available in one package as a reference for current and any new joiners to the team to explore.

Furthermore, these workshops would not have been a success without clarity on requirements, collective work between DDAR and L&OD in shaping the programme in a bespoke way, and the continued support and collaboration to ensure a sustainable solution. The evaluation and continuation of embedding the programme Action Learning Sets locally to continue to develop the team to support each other moving from discussions to action have also been crucial.

Vision

The Service Excellence Workshops in Development Services programme emphasised "service excellence" as collaborative and broke it down into three parts:

1) Setting the highest standards in all that we do.

2) Having the drive, appetite and work ethic to achieve standards.

3) Making everything we do values-led and people centric.

Tom Jirat, Head of Development Services in DDAR:

"As a leader, a personal commitment exists to ensuring service excellence is ingrained in the team culture...The overarching vision was for the whole team to integrate service excellence into everything they do, how they do it and that we are all accountable for delivering service excellence in its many forms and contexts, ensuring that everyone is empowered and able to deliver it."

The Project’s Planned Outcomes

Strengthen team cohesion and foster unity within the Development Services team following the significant challenges of personnel changes and the cyber incident.
Equipping colleagues with critical skills such as prioritising work effectively and delivering service excellence.
Promoting service excellence in all that we do through embedding a shared understanding of service excellence.
Empowering colleagues to enable them to feel confident, communicate assertively and to manage workloads and requests effectively.
Enhanced focus on wellbeing and incorporating wellbeing alongside skills and professional development.
Supporting organisation goals by positioning the team as a critical partner in acheiving the Universities strategic vision and preparing for the 2025 campaign.
Encouraging a culture of accountability where colleagues recognise thier role in delivering service excellence in all its many forms and contexts.
Maintaining high standards through ecouragement of good work ethics and drive to exceed expectations in all activities.
Reinforcing our values so they align with the Universities civic, value-led ethos.
Foster a two-way service through redefining service excellence as a collaborative, enabling interaction rather than a servile concept.
The Service Excellence workshops programme has been embedded into Actional Learning Sets and continue to develop the team in supporting each other moving from discussions to action.

The Project’s Planned Objectives vs Delivery

Objectives	Outcomes Realised
Develop shared, practical insights into how empowered, assertive communication supports service excellence by the team.	The qualiative feedback from participants across both sessions was positive and the skills and approaches developed have been seen to be put into daily practices. 100% of participants felt their skills improved because of the workshops and rated the programme 'good' or 'excellent'. Effective partnership approach with P&OD to delivering the programme worked well, it felt like we delivered a great example of OnePS in action. The collaboration between DDAR and L&OD over several months to shape and deliver the programme was impactful for Our People. In person delivery was successful as it provided a great opportunity for team relationship development and enhanced engagement
Develop skills to interrogate requests with confidence and support to prioritisation and service delivery.
Build confidence to communicate assertively in a range of challenging scenarios.
Increase influencing skills, such as developing ability to question and challenge collaboratively and constructively.
Strengthen team cohesion through shared experience and practice of skills.

Planned Benefits

Enhanced team resilence, unity and cohesion to address challenges of personnell changes and operational disruptions.
Skill development leading to empowerment, assertive communication and effective workload management.
Intergrating service excellence culture.
Increased empowerment, accountability and ownership of responsibilities.
Strengthened operational and strategic alignment.
Adopting a two-way service perspective to service excellence.
Improved team dynamics.
Long-term cultural shift towards sustainable service excellence and values-led work.
Alignment with institutional goals as the Development Team will continue to support strategic ambitions in fundraising and volunteering.

Feedback

Feedback captured from impacted colleagues is shown below:

Anonymous participant feedback:

"[The workshops] had a perfect mix of theory and practical activities. The facilitators were very good at getting people to engage, prompting people to think and making the workshop relevant to our own roles."

"Thank you very much for arranging and running the sessions, they've all been very useful. I think it is great that the techniques learned in the sessions are actively supported and encouraged by management, it allows the team to put them into practice more confidently and consistently. "

For more information on the Development and Alumni Relations Directorate, please click here