WST Summer School 2022: Programme Announced

Booking is now open for this year’s Work Smarter Together Summer School taking place on July 12 – 14 2022.

This year we are excited to engage with the conversations around Hybrid Working. The programme has been created with hybrid working, managing hybrid working as well as WST Summer School favourites.  Our sessions and presentations in 2022 have all been selected because of their relevance to for how we work together today and in UCD that’s hybrid. Sessions are themselves a mix of remote, in person and on campus with the return of in person training and the continuation of remote training options.

We’re excited to collaborate with the Hybrid Experiment Working Group to hear from colleagues about their experiences and to welcome participants back to on campus Yellow Belt training. We’re also running the some of the popular DO Lean sessions and change management orientation as well as hearing from colleagues around the campus about their achievements and discoveries.

Day 1: Tuesday 12th July 2022
Booking Link Time Session Name
Format
Location
Session Description
Session 1: 10:00 – 12:00 WST: Hybrid Working Experiment Case Studies & Community Consultation Session 1
Remote
 Zoom
What’s your experience of hybrid working?

Join one of three sessions  facilitated by the hybrid trial working group, UCD community members will have the opportunity hear updates from different hybrid working groups across campus and be invited to share and reflect on their experience of the hybrid working trial.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their experience with colleagues, reflecting on what has been positive and challenging about this for them and their teams, and highlight what matters most to them as UCD prepares to move out of the trial phase.

Session 2: 11:00 – 12:00 USM Working Smarter Together as a hybrid team Hybrid
  The USM team present the tools and tactics they use to devise, plan and complete their dynamic remit. The USM team have a role that involves working closely with colleagues across campus to support, enable and drive a consistent quality of service. 

Recently, the USM Team went through a number of changes, including a changeover of staff and the addition of new responsibilities. More than ever, it’s important to the team to work closely together, keep up to speed on what’s happening with one another and be able to manage their growing workload. To do this, they have attempted to stay ahead of the change curve by implementing new approaches to planning and tracking their workload, devising working norms that help set expectations for the team and trying out new tools and approaches to help them work smarter together.

In this session the team will share their experiences of what has worked for them and what might work for you in working as a hybrid team.

Session 3: 12:00 – 13:00 Writing the book of Hybrid Ways of Working Hybrid
  How would you consider your hybrid working routine? Have you considered it in the current context? When was the last time we stepped back and took the ‘balcony-view’ of how we are doing what we are doing. What new norms have become part of how we work that we are taking for granted? What things have we still not figured out and how might we start shaping them? We all want to work well together, the hybrid environment is a catalyst to take a look at what working well together actually means to us”. We’ve all been so busy adapting and getting on with things. 

In this interactive session, we will pause together and reflect on the doing in order to formulate a list of good approaches that we, the UCD community, can employ in our day to day.

Finally, we will be able to reinforce the claim that ‘We wrote the book on Hybrid Ways of Working.’

This session is open to all with an interest in discussing new ways of working.

Session 4: 14:00 – 15:00 DO: Remit Mapping – Where are we now?
Remote
Zoom
As we face the challenges and opportunities of hybrid working and the return to campus, we often need to step back and think of where we want to get to and when you are plotting the journey to that future, what is the ‘now’ you are leaving from? 

Remit mapping helps you paint the ‘now’. Just what is my remit now? Just what is our team’s remit now? Do we all share the same clarity on this? Do those around us clearly understand? How does what I do, and what we do, contribute? Our ‘my remit’ model looks to what I am responsible for, my autonomy and accountability in that, how this connects with my team and line management, and how this in turn connects with the University’s structures. My remit, broadly, provides me with the purpose of my job.

The same logic applies when looking at teams – remit provides purpose – and where that remit comes from helps show how what a team does contributes to the broader contexts – units, School, College, and University.

 

Session 5: 15:00-16:00 DO: Lean Thinking Remote
Zoom
How do we know if we are focusing our efforts on the right things? How can we deliver a better service without increased effort – or maybe with less effort? How can I develop a culture of continuous improvement in my team? 

This session provides a practical introduction to Lean thinking designed as a starting point for your journey towards using a continuous improvement mindset – where you naturally seek to improve value and efficiency as part of how you work – while focusing your effort on what matters most.

Session goal:
To understand the key Lean principles and able to consider them in the context of daily work.

Day 2: Wednesday 13th July 2022
Session 7: 10:00 – 12:00 WST: Hybrid Working Experiment Case Studies & Community Consultation Session 2
  
Remote
Zoom
What’s your experience of hybrid working?

Join one of three sessions facilitated by the hybrid trial working group, UCD community members will have the opportunity hear updates from different hybrid working groups across campus and be invited to share and reflect on their experience of the hybrid working trial.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their experience with colleagues, reflecting on what has been positive and challenging about this for them and their teams, and highlight what matters most to them as UCD prepares to move out of the trial phase.

Session 8: 12:00 – 13:00 DO: Mural Remote
Zoom
Have you heard about Mural and wondered what everyone is talking about? Maybe you’ve even used it before and walked away feeling shaken… perhaps stirred? 

Mural is a great tool for online collaboration that makes it easy to share and capture ideas in a vibrant and creative way. It can also be a bit overwhelming if you’ve never used it before. This session is aimed at people who are interested in what Mural is but might feel like they don’t have the skills to use it. We’ll cover the absolute basics of the tool, how to access it and how to use it. You’ll leave the session with a much better understanding of how to use Mural and the confidence to get engaged with any future sessions that use it!

Session goals:
– comfortably navigate a mural board
– add, move and remove information
– organise and reorganise your board
– use frameworks to group your work and outlines to make it easier to find
– vote and set timers

The focus in this session will be on supporting staff to learn a new skill, which will in turn enable them to make best use of a tool to support meetings, design workshops, brainstorm ideas and more. All leading to more productive meetings and connecting remote teams for success.

Session 9: 14:15 – 15:00 WST Case Study: University for All Hybrid Symposium Hybrid
    

Learn how the University for All Symposium managed a large-scale hybrid event. Understand the practicalities, logistics and challenges through the lens of Universal Design and gain insight on how to engage large audiences in person and online successfully.

Session 10: 15:30 – 16:00 UCD Taskmaster – Hybrid Edition Hybrid
   

Whether you’re a fan of taskmaster or just enjoy some good clean fun, join us for a quick burst of competitive hybrid fun. Teams will need to use their creativity and wit to win our glorious taskmaster trophy.

We’re calling on units to put forward their teams of 4 to compete in a series of ludicrously simple games judged by our very own taskmaster. Don’t be detered by whether your team is remote,
on campus or hybrid, we’re taking this opportunity to show you what the DTEN has to offer.

Day 3: Thursday 14th July 2022
Session 12: 10:00 – 12:00 WST: Hybrid Working Experiment Case Studies & Community Consultation Session 3 Remote
Zoom
What’s your experience of hybrid working?

Join one of three sessions facilitated by the hybrid trial working group, UCD community members will have the opportunity hear updates from different hybrid working groups across campus and be invited to share and reflect on their experience of the hybrid working trial.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their experience with colleagues, reflecting on what has been positive and challenging about this for them and their teams, and highlight what matters most to them as UCD prepares to move out of the trial phase.

Session 13: 12:00-13:00 Excel Problem Solvers Group – relaunch of COP Hybrid
  Excel Problem Solvers Group – relaunch of COP

The USM has reimagined the Excel Learning Group by bringing it back as an Excel ‘problem solving’ group. When we say ‘problem’, we mean those issues and inefficiencies that we all experience daily in trying to carry out the various jobs that we have to do.

We envisage that this group will be an Excel learning community & problem solving group, that will learn skills from each other by solving real life problems for the community. Within UCD there are colleagues who use Excel but want to learn more, while at the same time there are Excel experts who want to use the tool creatively to solve problems. By bringing these people together we believe that Excel will be better utilised as a creative & efficient tool to solve problems, and in turn that the necessary skills to complete day to day tasks will become more widely dispersed.

Whether you are an Excel expert, or someone who has an Excel problem, this session is open to all, so do come along if you’d like to learn more.

Session 14: 12:00-13:00 DO Lean: Getting to the root of a problem Remote
Zoom
How many times have you made a fix only for the problem to resurface, or another issue to crop up in its place? How often have you struggled to convince someone of what the right thing to fix is? 

This workshop looks at how we can challenge our assumptions using root cause analysis to address the question of “what is the right thing to fix so the problem goes away for good?”

Session goals:
You will get hands on experience using some root cause analysis tools: 5 why’s and Fishbone diagram.
You will understand the context in which each tool is useful.

Session 15: 13:00 – 14:00 Lunch time Networking Event 

 

In person
  Join us on campus for a lunch time event to meet colleagues and share your learning and insight from this year’s WST Summer School
Session 16: 14:15 – 15:00 Digital Office: Hybrid IT Checklist 

 

Remote
Zoom
From managing your time to cutting down on emails, this session will show you all the IT you need for working effectively and securely online.
Session 17: 15:00-16:00 DO Lean: Defining Success Remote
Zoom
How can we seek to continuously improve if we are not clear on how we define success? 

This session shows you how to start with your team’s purpose, understand who your customers are and what your customer values. You can then start to understand the difference between value and waste in our work and what constitutes success.

Session goals:
-Understand what is meant by customer and value Be able to identify value in a process Hands on experience in assessing the ‘voice of the customer’

Session 18: 9:30 – 4:30  Yellow Belt Training
In person
  The course is structured to give participants a fundamental understanding of the concepts and key tools of Lean Six Sigma using an individual issue or problem to get real experience of using the tools typically used in a Yellow Belt project. 

The outcome of the training will be candidates with the requisite knowledge and confidence to participate on Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Projects. The course has little or no statistical content and will focus on identifying waste and other process issues through the use of Team based tools. These tools may be knowledge based or use data analysis to investigate current process performance.

Participants achieve the following learning outcomes from the programme:  

An understanding of the concepts of Lean and Six Sigma and their application to process improvement Practical know-how in the application of the DMAIC Methodology to business process improvement A working knowledge of the core Yellow Belt tools typically used in a Lean Six Sigma projectIf you are looking for an in-depth exploration of Lean and have a project in mind, Yellow Belt will provide you with a good understanding of the concepts and key tools of Lean Six Sigma.

This course will run as a full day in person event on Thursday July 14 9:30 – 4:30pm