What is your assignment? What are you addressing?
At the beginning of the year, the ‘Services’ working group was given the extensive task to improve services within VU Amsterdam. We have chosen a two-track approach: (1) making decisions about what to tackle this year based on consultations with faculties, and (2) establishing several guiding principles and procedures for services that will help us continuously improve support, even after 2024. We should also remember that many things are already going well, even compared to other institutions. We also draw inspiration from good examples within VU Amsterdam, such as the NERDS network for research data management and the progress made in supporting Lifelong Learning (LLO).
The areas we are focusing on this year are:
• Better collaboration across departments to improve the VU-wide onboarding process
• Working together in cross-departmental chains to facilitate the organization of events
• Improving the findability of and information about services
• Better alignment of the demand for and supply of services by improving the Product and Service catalogs
The guiding principles we have established are:
1. The services offered are well-known, easily accessible, and available.
2. We offer integrated services.
3. The services are future-proof and capable to improve continuously.
4. We standardize the demand side of services.
5. Service providers and users behave professionally, both internally and toward each other.
6. We adhere to the established frameworks.
These may seem like obvious points, but the reality is that we are currently not adhering to them sufficiently.
One of the lessons from the evaluation of MARS was that, in addition to managers, employees also need to be more involved. How are you involving more VU staff (beyond just the top management)?
Using the guiding principles, we engage with the responsible departments that work on the chosen topics. We don’t claim to know better than the colleagues who work on services every day. We use input from the faculties to jointly come up with improvement proposals. The challenge then lies in implementing these proposals. Everyone is busy and initially prefers to keep things as they are because change takes time. But change also brings opportunities, and it is also part of your job to keep improving things and find joy in that. Part of successful change is involving the user. We do this by gathering and testing ideas during the implementation.
We also have a ‘think tank,’ which consists of a cross-section of VU employees from both faculties and services. These colleagues actively contribute to solutions for service improvement.
