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Vice-Chancellor's Christmas message
Vice-Chancellor's Christmas Message 2022
The Vice-Chancellor Graham Galbraith's Christmas message for staff after an eventful year.
New People Strategy - together we are Portsmouth
We have launched a new People Strategy for the University with the aim to be a global employer of choice where our exceptional people will work in collaboration to achieve excellence.
Our people, both our colleagues and students, are at the heart of everything we do and the intention of our People Strategy 2030 is that it will underpin the continued realisation of the wider University Strategy 2025 and Vision 2030. Our People Strategy will be a key contributor supporting our underlying principle of educating and transforming lives, and will drive a culture of excellence where all our people can achieve great things.
It has nine inter connected themes based on our values of being ambitious, responsible and open:
- Talent, Attraction And Retention
- Performance, Development And Growth
- Rewarding And Recognising Excellence
- Leadership
- People Management
- Wellbeing
- Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
- Future of Work
- Engagement
The People Strategy will be achieved by a collaborative university wide commitment which is underpinned by an innovative and future-focused high performing Human Resources Team.
To measure success and impact, each of our nine People Strategy Themes has its own set of measurements which are reported on in our annual HR Operating Plan. It is a living document with progress tracked against key deliverables every four weeks by the Chief People Officer Fiona Hnatow and the HR Leadership Team.
Please read the strategy for full details, with further details of initiatives to be shared in the coming months.
2021/22 Financial Statements
The Financial Statements for the financial year 2021/22 were approved by the Board of Governors at their meeting on 23 November 2022.
The University budgeted for a deficit of £10 million in 2021/22. The final result was an operating deficit of £7 million. While there was a shortfall in income from home full-time undergraduate students due to the under-recruitment in 2021/22 this was compensated for in large part by the over-recruitment of international students, notably those who started their programmes of study in January 2022. There were savings in costs achieved by many of our faculties and professional services, by deferring or scaling back planned activity. There was also a reduction in expenditure due to challenges with recruiting staff to an increasing number of academic disciplines and areas of professional expertise and due to supply chain issues causing delays in much of our procurement.
At 31 July 2022 our cash balances were £325 million, this comprising a mixture of the loan we secured a few years ago and accumulated surpluses achieved over a number of previous years. Plans to accelerate the Estates Master Plan are in development and these cash balances have been accumulated to help fund these developments.
The Financial Statements are available online.
Vice-Chancellor’s Address - the next 12 months
Thank you to the hundreds of colleagues who were able to join me and UEB members for my annual address, which outlined the external and internal challenges including the economically difficult times we all face. Yet, despite these challenges we have been able to make positive progress in three out of our four strategic imperatives. Importantly, we also outlined what the next 12 months has in store with a common message of ‘less discussion, more action’ and a plea to colleagues that if there is no good evidence-based link between some activity and our four strategic imperatives it is not a priority; it will not – and should not – happen.
The staff questions posed during the sessions were also very valuable to me and UEB colleagues, highlighting staff ideas and concerns which will help influence our thinking and shape our plans. A recording of Monday’s virtual session is available for those who couldn’t attend. Please take the time to view as it’s a guide to show where we are, and where we are heading.
£5.8 million Technology investment
I’d like to congratulate colleagues at the Faculty of Technology for successfully bidding for £5.8m to transform its facilities. The funding will be used for new equipment, laboratories and simulated learning environments, including a ‘clean room’ for space applications and advanced renewable energy equipment to prepare the next generation of engineers and technicians.
It has been awarded by the Office for Students (OfS), which is providing millions in capital funding to support investment in new buildings, facilities and equipment for universities and colleges across England.
As I mentioned in this article, this is an exciting opportunity to support transformation in the Faculty, responding to employer skills needs and integrating research strengths into curriculum development. This includes world-leading research by our Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, which was ranked 6th out of 44 institutions in Physics across the UK in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.
This is another great example of significant investment in our campus following the opening of Ravelin Sports Centre, CCIXR, and a £2m award to expand our healthcare simulation facilities.
Faster, more accessible and searchable websites
It’s true to say in the digital world, websites are our shop windows. Optimised, engaging, high-performing websites are integral to make sure we can deliver what our applicants, students, researchers, partners and community members need.
Our three main websites - port.ac.uk, myport.ac.uk and sport.port.ac.uk - now have enhanced search, speed and accessibility after colleagues in Marketing, Advancement and Communications moved over 20,000 web pages from our old content management system to a more flexible system called Drupal. It is widely used across the higher education sector and other high profile international organisations, with a more streamlined web editing experience to reduce staff time. The adoption of Drupal will also significantly reduce monthly costs to the University compared to our old content management system.
But the work does not stop there. Next steps from this month include content delivery personalisation, user experience reviews of our key recruitment pages, architecture and content improvements on our research pages and more search improvements. More details are available in this staff news article.
This is a substantial and important project and my thanks go to all colleagues involved.
Vice-Chancellor’s Awards and Long Service Awards
Today we are celebrating staff and students at the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence and the staff Long Service Awards, which for the first time have been brought together at a joint celebratory event. The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards celebrate students, staff, alumni and members of the community who have made an exceptional contribution to the University, its values, its ambition and its success, while the Long Service Awards celebrate colleagues who have completed 25 years’ service at the University.
These awards are one of my highlights of the year. I know everyone is working hard with busy lives, and it’s fantastic to be able to stop for a moment and congratulate colleagues and students for some amazing achievements and provide them with some well-deserved recognition. We will share details of the 2 VC Award winners, 9 VC Commendation winners and 34 Long Service Awards next week.