The success of any plan to improve the working culture of a university depends far less on how it is written and far more on how it is interpreted and applied by teams and departments. Change is felt in how a manager runs a team meeting, how a colleague experiences workload, how opportunities are shared and how inclusive a space feels day-to-day.
Change is felt “locally”. The institutional view – documents, themes, commitments – is important, because it signals intent and sets direction, but it is not where change is felt.
When we launched our People Plan 2025/26-2027/28 with the aim of improving staff experience, supporting career development and creating the conditions for everyone to do their best work, we were clear that it would and could not just be owned by one team. Instead, it would be something leaders actively work with to shape decisions, prompt conversations and help all our teams focus on what matters most for colleagues in their daily lives.
The shift from strategy to lived experience is where the real work begins.
Start with conversation, not process
It can be tempting to move quickly to drafting documents or defining actions – but the most effective local plans begin with conversation.
Leaders need space to ask, and genuinely explore, a number of questions:
- What is already working well for our people?
- Where are the challenges and frustrations?
- What would make the biggest difference over the next year?
One of the most common pitfalls is trying to do too much. Faced with a new institutional strategy, teams often feel pressure to respond with a long list of new initiatives. The result is predictable – unwieldy plans, unclear ownership and lost momentum.
A more effective approach is to be deliberate about focus. At our university, our guidance to local teams is a simple balance – continue what is working, refine where needed and introduce a small number of new actions. In practice, this often means that the majority of effort stays with existing activity, with targeted improvements and only a handful of genuinely new initiatives.
This approach is not about lowering ambition. It is about increasing the likelihood of meaningful delivery.
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Turning themes into action
The next step is to translate broad themes into something tangible. Institutional plans often speak in terms of inclusion, development, community or systems. These are the right priorities but they can feel abstract unless they are made specific.
At a local level, this means asking: what would this look like here? If the priority is to create a more inclusive and supportive environment, the answer might not be a change project. It might be as simple as changing how we run meetings, give feedback and model behaviours in our departments or faculties. If the focus is career development, it might be about making existing opportunities more visible, such as mentoring schemes, leadership programmes or secondments. It might be about actively encouraging “stretch” experiences that help colleagues build confidence and visibility, such as leading a cross-department project, chairing a working group or representing their team in senior discussions.
What matters is that staff can see and feel the difference. If all our colleagues do not recognise our People Plan in their everyday experience, it is unlikely to succeed.
Keep it shared, visible and alive
Of course we, as leaders, should not do this work in isolation. We built the plan on insights gathered from meetings, conversations and our annual staff survey, and that’s helped hugely; involving people early has improved the quality of our plan as well as credibility. We’re noticing that people engage with change they have helped shape.
Equally important is keeping the plan alive. This is not a document to be written and set aside. In some areas it can be helpful to identify a dedicated lead or champion to maintain momentum and ensure actions continue to move forward. Leaders should revisit progress regularly, whether through leadership discussions, team meetings or internal communications. For example, we created a central hub for content and a series of case studies.
Over time, this consistency builds trust. Staff begin to see that commitments are followed through, that feedback leads to change and that the plan is not simply a statement of intent.
A plan you can feel
When this happens, the impact is tangible. People understand priorities more clearly. Experiences become more consistent across teams. And, importantly, individuals feel more supported in their work and development.
None of this is driven by the document itself. It comes from the accumulation of small, deliberate actions taken locally.
Perhaps that is the most important point. A plan to improve the working culture of a university does not need to be complex to be effective. In fact, the opposite is often true. The most successful approaches are those that are focused, realistic and rooted in everyday practice.
For leaders, the challenge is not to interpret every element of a strategy, but to identify where they can make the biggest difference and to act on it.
Because ultimately, a plan only matters if people can feel it.
Donna Dalrymple is chief people officer at UCL.
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