Friday 6 February 2015

Have we got the right KPI?

Had an interesting meeting of the Equality and Diversity Board the other day. One of the University's KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), is raising the number of female professors to 23% by 2016. In fact, we have reached the target early, and the number of female professors continues to rise. There's a number of initiatives contributing to this, which you can read about here.  EDB received a report which will be going to Council next week outlining this progress, which is all good stuff, but we had quite a debate on whether this was an appropriate KPI. It only looks at part of the UNiversity - Professional Services are not considered at all as the KPI refers only to academic professors, not professorial equivalent staff. Also, even in academic departments gender equality across the board is not reported on, as only academic staff, not clerical, technical, manual, ancillary and other professional staff are not included. I think its great that we have a KPI relating to gender equality, and that we've reached the target, but I am disappointed that it is so limited in scope.

Also this week we had a visit from a CIO colleague from another University - he's an alumnus of Sheffield, and had been taking part in one of our Achieve More Faculty Challenges, by talking to Faculty of Arts Students in their ThinkCreate event. These events are huge undertakings for the University - the Social Sciences first year event is for 2,000 students, and the logistics are not inconsiderable!  Was pleased to hear that is was going well, and there was a real buzz in the room. Also gave us a chance to catch up and share some challenges and solutions from our respective institutions.

Also this week I've had a lot of one-to one catch ups with senior colleagues. These are invaluable in keeping up to date with what's going on, and building a network for help and support when needed. They also mean I drink far too much coffee!






1 comment:

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