Leadership and Governance
Professional Services
The governing body of the University is the Council, which comprises 24 members, most of whom are lay members external to the University. The University has a strong working relationship between the Council and the executive, and our recent Council effectiveness review commended the ‘strong sense of there being “one team” across non-executives, executives and staff and student members’. The University Executive Board (UEB) is the senior leadership team of the University and a Committee of Council. It is chaired by the Vice-Chancellor and its membership is shown here: Leadership - University of Birmingham.
The University is organised into five academic colleges, each of which consists of several schools and departments. Each College is led by a Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of College who is a member of the University Executive Board. The five colleges are: Arts and Law, Engineering and Physical Sciences, Life and Environmental Sciences, Medicine and Health, and Social Sciences. To bring together the senior academic and Professional Services leadership across the University, there is a University Leadership Group (ULG) led by the Vice- Chancellor, which meets weekly and has regular strategy away days. The Director of Estates is a member of ULG.
The University of Birmingham has fully unified Professional Services, led by the Registrar and Chief Operating Officer, who is supported by the Registrar’s Leadership Group (RLG), made up of the Directors of Professional Services (Senior Officers) and the College Directors of Operations. The Registrar is the University’s Chief Operating Officer, reporting to the Vice- Chancellor and Principal. The Director of Estates is a member of RLG. We aim for high quality Professional Services in support of the University’s academic mission. Across all of our Professional Services, we recognise that it is our people who are the heart of what we do, and so we are focussed on creating a culture for them to thrive. We have a sector-leading staff development programme: The Birmingham Professional , supported by a longstanding Graduate Management Trainee programme: Graduate Training Scheme. Many of our senior leaders are also closely involved with professional sector networks and representative bodies. We look to the national and international higher education sector, and beyond, to identify best practice. We compare our efficiency and effectiveness in Professional Services with other Russell Group and similar international universities in Australia, New Zealand and North America as part of the Uniforum benchmarking consortium. These insights allow us to understand and adopt global best practice. For example, we have recently adopted a University-wide approach to the functional co-ordination of services connecting local with central support, with each Senior Officer acting as Functional Co-Ordinator for the area.
We undertake an ongoing programme of service development in light of sector trends and in response to user feedback. As a result, we have made significant progress in recent years resulting in measurable improvements in user satisfaction and efficiency in several areas.
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