Within UNISAOver the past week or so, many people at both UniSA and the University of Adelaide have taken part in staff culture surveys. Thank you to everyone who is already using it. And for those of you who want to close but aren’t ready yet, there’s still plenty of time until we close on Monday, March 4th.
As it says on the tin, this survey aims to gain a clearer understanding of how each university’s staff feels about their current university culture.
This will focus on helping the team leading the creation of the new University of Adelaide understand what staff like and dislike so that they can embrace the former and eliminate bias. Part of a larger work in progress. The latter forever.
These teams are looking at everything and this is a unique opportunity to do so, especially at a time when there is growing awareness of the importance of workplace wellbeing, both within the university sector and across the wider community.
We recognize the challenges and opportunities that come with it. And we are listening to staff, students and other stakeholders (including UniSA’s world-class experts in the field) as we address this issue. In doing so, we are taking a big-picture approach and ensuring that a positive culture is woven into every fiber of the new university, not just something fixed for display, like a badge on a canvas bag. I’m trying to guarantee that.
As we know, human culture is a messy thing – brilliantly so. It is often almost impossible to draw a circle around a particular culture, define it, and clearly explain how and why it came into being. Dancing and cooking may be examples of culture, but culture is not like a set of dance steps or recipes, it is not something that can simply be learned and replicated.
Culture is the collective result of the actions of vast numbers of individuals, and while those individual actions may be conscious and intentional, the collective outcome is usually far less certain. The result is an interaction, an intersection, which can be interpreted as differently as there are individuals who contribute to it.
So, as we begin to shape the new University of Adelaide culture, we cannot simply look two years from now and say, “Our culture is going to be X, Y and Z.” That won’t work. We cannot directly determine our culture. We determine our actions, and then, through a spectacularly messy, arcane, and ever-evolving process, we determine our culture.1.
That’s why we take great care when deciding on these actions, not only in a “people” sense, but also in a more holistic sense. If you want to create an institution that has a culture that is vibrant, inclusive and inspiring for staff and students, he says one way to achieve that is to ensure that the institution is vibrant, inclusive and and work on work that moves people.
That is why we place so much emphasis on enshrining the values of equity, diversity and social inclusion within University of Adelaide Law.
That’s why the University of Adelaide continues UniSA’s core purpose of providing learning opportunities for people who are “underrepresented in education”, including meeting the “needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”. promised.
That’s why our new law promises to “focus on excellence, fair opportunity and innovation,” to “support environmental protection and promote sustainability,” and to ensure that our new universities “will: We define specific goals, such as initiatives to tackle. the community it serves.”
By doing good work for others, we can create a good culture for ourselves. And the University of Adelaide has been working on that, just as UniSA has been doing for the past 30 years.
Alongside this, of course, we need to embed good professional practice through the systems we will put in place over the coming months to ensure our staff and students can thrive. The University of Adelaide is also working on it.
But if we truly want to create a new institution that promotes equity, diversity, well-being, and fulfillment for those who work and study in it, then as our core mission we must We need to promote the same concept. society.
Professor David Lloyd
Vice President and President
- A good analogy here is that culture is the smoke rising from the fire of our actions. Smoke is not the purpose of fire, but one cannot exist without the other. The type of fire also determines the type of smoke. But in a world in dire need of reducing carbon emissions, that analogy doesn’t really fit, so perhaps you’ll forget that I’ve ever walked that path…