Change Management

What is Change Management?

The landscape of Higher Education is evolving constantly and at Reading, change is inevitable in order to remain relevant and sustainable and to seize opportunities. 

Whilst change is part of normal practise, it's important that it is properly planned and managed to ensure that people are supported throughout their change journey, from the current state to the future state.

Change management is a defined approach for successfully managing the people side of change.

 The Change Management Process 

If you’re thinking about implementing change at the University in, for example, ways of working, processes, structures or systems, you should refer to the University's change management process first, before developing your idea. The change management process applies to those change initiatives that have a wider impact on the University and its people, to help ensure that they are carefully planned and managed from the start.

The change process enables you to develop your initiative with input from those that support and manage change regularly and places an emphasis on both process and people aspects of change.

Everything you need to know about the change management process, and templates can be found here.

Change Management Approach

There is a technical side and people side to change. The technical involves designing, developing and delivering the solution to bring about the change. The people side is about helping people to embrace, adopt and embed the change. Both aspects of change need to be properly planned and managed in order achieve the aims and objectives and realise the benefits.

The Change Management Toolkit 

The Change and Continuous Improvement team have created a Change Management Toolkit to support colleagues responsible for making change happen at the University, a wealth of change management resources have been curated into this toolkit. This toolkit has been designed to help you plan and manage the people aspects of change in a proactive rather than reactive way.

Change and Continuous Improvement Team

Change Improvement Group meeting schedule

The Change Improvement Group, on behalf of the Planning and Change Board, are responsible for ensuring that change is properly managed at the University. The Change Improvement Group membership and Terms of Reference can be found on the Governance webpages.

The Change Improvement Group meeting schedule for this academic year (23/24) is provided below: