3.4 The HEI’s examples of successful enhancement activities

Promoting multidisciplinarity, cross-sectorality, and pluralism in the university community

The university has invested in promoting dialogue and interaction between the university’s leadership, faculties and its departments, for example through departmental tours by the rectors and virtual information sessions open to the whole community. 

The university is currently working on a wide-ranging diversity programme, with the aim of making diversity more visible, and developing measures to strengthen diversity, inclusion, and equality.

The university’s career model work has looked extensively at career progression opportunities and identified areas for development to support different career stages.

Part-time employment of grant researchers

As of June 2021, researchers with grants have had the opportunity to enter into a part-time employment relationship (10%) with the university, improving their status and guaranteeing them access to the benefits normally covered by the employment relationship, as well as allowing them to become more closely involved in the university community.

Developing a quality system

The university’s quality system has been streamlined by abandoning the separate, unit-specific quality manuals, which require a lot of maintenance work. They have been replaced with a university-wide quality management description, the university’s common process descriptions and operating guidelines. The description and documentation of quality management is gathered in one place on the Heimo quality management website.

The university has a functioning quality organisation, which has been updated to reflect organisational changes and at the same time cooperation between different levels of the organisation has been strengthened. The Quality Group, which is responsible for guiding and developing quality work, works well, as do the quality teams and the network of People in Charge of Quality in units. The network is well established and acts as a good relay of quality information from the quality bodies to the staff.

Internal audits and management reviews have been developed to support strategic management and performance management as part of knowledge management.

Strategic Human Resources Plan

Human resources planning aims to implement the strategy and renew the operations through successful recruitments and employee selections. The plan includes mapping the competence available in international and national networks and through other cooperation scenes and identifying competence that provides the most added value to research and education (expanding the recruitment pool).

The aim of human resources planning is to create a three-year outlook of competence and recruitment needs and how to find the necessary resources to meet those needs. The plan is updated annually.

Human resources planning assesses the competence of current staff, the loss of competence through exiting employees, and the competence relevant to retaining and renewing functions. Human resources planning concerning external funding projects supports the implementation of the project and the related recruiting activities. It is also a part of the unit and its functions, contributing to supporting their renewal.

High-quality human resources planning is predictive, engaging and supports the equal and non-discriminating treatment of the people who participate in the recruitment process.
Human resources planning includes preparing a plan for the implementation of recruitment (proactive recruiting).