Prioritising our Values

“I joined Imperial in 2018 and found it an institution with an understandably keen interest in evidence-based decisions. From the outset, my Organisational Development and Inclusion teams were able to use historical survey results to inform their work. I was able to use the results to persuade Imperial leaders to discuss and commit to short, medium, and long-term priorities for the university to improve our leadership skills, working environment and culture.

Cohesion and momentum

“Bringing together the senior leadership teams was a crucial first step in 2018 and having survey insights on where we were doing well and where we might improve, helped them to focus, consider options and develop an action plan.

“Establishing the Imperial Values has been one of highlights of this ongoing work. I set up a senior leaders Values project team as part of the action plan and helped them to explore how a set of Values and behaviours could help the University. They saw them as a helpful tool signposting the type of positive, inclusive and respectful environment which would foster innovation and enable people to do the best work of their lives. This senior leadership support helped boost the initial thinking on Values.

“Leaders encouraged teams to join focus groups facilitated by HR and Organisational Development colleagues, which explored experiences and developed cross organisational thinking around what was important to us as staff in our time at Imperial; what we valued and held dear. These sessions ended up going online as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“Bringing staff together to talk about what was important in how we worked together was intended to deliver a set of useful Values and behaviours, but it also played a key role in creating a sense of community at a challenging time.

“This staff input to discuss and develop the Values ensured that we avoided what is often one of the biggest pitfalls of large-scale organisational change – crafting initiatives that lack the detail, resources, and most importantly community support to deliver them.  

“While we were working to develop with the community a set of Values, we also became aware of several high-profile incidents demonstrating that our ‘unwritten’ values were not being sufficiently adhered to at the highest levels of our leadership.

"These incidents underlined how important it was to complete this work and launch a set of values that could be used day-to-day by our community to challenge or encourage certain behaviours, and to set our ambition for a positive, inclusive, and respectful environment in which people are enabled to do their best work.  

Visibility and enthusiasm 

“By having such great levels of staff engagement with the survey each time, we can see what is important to staff and also monitor progress generally, both locally and across the institution.  This will help us to embed ways of working based on our Values and continue to improve leadership, development opportunities and the working environment and culture. 

“In fact, the work instigated by the 2017/18 and subsequent year’s survey results, truly broadened community conversations in ways I could not have imagined. We got such strong commitment from the leadership to sponsor and champion work to improve the employee experience at Imperial.  You may have heard of the reverse-mentoring scheme for example. It’s had a positive impact on the relationships between staff and senior leaders and has fostered increased understanding between distinct groups of staff.

“In establishing the scheme, I discovered several senior sponsors who were passionate about mentoring and proved to be fantastic ambassadors in driving the project forward. It was the same with the Values campaign; the number of staff who have asked how they can help and have shared their experience of Values on videos, posters etc is inspiring and showed me how much pride we have and how keen we all are to play our part in making Imperial an amazing place to work.  

Next steps

“The oversight of the Values and the Imperial Together actions has now moved under the new People and Culture Committee (PCC) which is chaired by the President. This means the people issues are at the forefront of senior leadership thinking. One of the first tasks of the PCC was to review the Imperial Together Action plan which has driven much of our ambition and evaluation activity since the launch of the Values. The plan has been successfully delivered and will be refreshed to continue to set important benchmarks and actions for staff survey results.    

“The staff survey is an incredibly useful tool that allows us to better understand and respond to our working environment, whilst capturing how well our Values are being experienced.

“I encourage colleagues to set aside the time to engage with the survey in a thoughtful and honest manner. By sharing our experiences and ideas together, we can keep making Imperial the best place to work and identify where we change things for the better.”