#BUProud of our BU Service excellence conferences
Susanne Clarke, Head of Service Excellence
and Dr Camila Devis-Rozental, Senior Lecturer Service excellence
Today we launch our April Service Excellence Conference – our 7 th conference and we have a great line up of speakers to inspire you, take a look at the link and book your place today
https://staffintranet.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/news/thismonth/serviceexcellenceconference-11april2019.php
We thought we would give you a reminder of what took place during our mid-year conference too, as we are very proud of our service excellence conference, which involve so many staff across BU sharing knowledge, skills and practice to help us continue to embed this key part of our BU Life.
The Service Excellence Conference held in December was a resounding success, with over 200 staff from across BU participating in a number of inspiring events throughout the day.
In the morning, delegates heard from our vice chancellor John Vinney during a short interview where he emphasised that people were BU’s most important asset. We were inspired by Geoff Ramm, who brought us Celebrity Service ‘Take Two’. Geoff talked about innovative new approaches to delivering service excellence and challenged delegates to come up with ideas through various creative activities.
During the day, the Service Excellence Actions – based on a ‘head, hand and heart’ idea developed from Devis-Rozental’s (2018) model based on Galvin and Todres (2013) embodied relational understanding theory were launched.
From theory:
Embodied relational understanding model (Devis-Rozental 2018, p. 168)
To practice:
Service Excellence at BU
Service excellence actions
Always making a great BU impression
As part of the team here at BU you ARE the university. It’s the service you offer that makes the difference between a great experience, or one they would rather forget. As an inclusive university, it’s our aim to make everyone feel welcome.
Consideration, kindness & a caring approach
We value being part of a diverse BU community. We show respect by always treating others with courtesy, politeness and kindness. We listen to what others have to say and we speak well of others. We celebrate achievements and are positive role models. We care for our BU environment and our wider community.
Taking a positive outlook in all we do and all we say
We are passionate advocates of our BU values. We keep a positive mind-set using clear language and active listening. We love what we do and we know how our job contributes to the overall BU values and goals.
Inspired to make others feel special
We know that one size doesn’t fit all; and we work hard to respond to the specific needs of others to make every interaction count. We choose to build effective relationships whilst achieving our tasks. We know that nothing stands still and we keep our knowledge up to date and we create opportunities to share best practice and learn from others.
Opportunities to make things right
We are adaptable and flexible we ask for and respond positively to feedback. We make a personal commitment to take responsibility to resolve issues, focusing on effective solutions. We take a proactive approach to understand different perspectives, and we use this knowledge to develop a personalised approach.
Nurture relationships leaving an exceptional lasting BU impression
We have pride in our BU brand; we follow through on our promises and show gratitude with kindness. We embody our BU values to build trusting and lasting relationships, ensuring everyone feels part of the BU community and become BU ambassadors.
Service excellence is what we do with our head, hand and heart
Practicing with our head, hand and heart means that we take into account our knowledge and experiences (head), the way in which we do things and our approaches (hand) and our emotions, empathy and a caring approach (heart) as areas of equal importance interrelated to each other.
These actions are simple concepts that staff can implement in order to achieve great service excellence throughout the university. These have been developed taking into account the Humanisation framework developed by Todres et al. (2009) and with the BU 2025 values of Excellence, Inclusivity, Responsibility, Creativity at its heart.
Embedding the Service excellence actions
A new workshop format was used during the conference to bring these Actions to life by combining the concepts with interactive activities, to show how they could work in practice. If you feel your team could benefit from one of these workshops, please contact Susanne Clarke sclarke@bournemouth.ac.uk or Dr Camila Devis-Rozental cdevisrozental@bournemouthla.ac.uk to find out more.
Room 101
A panel of colleagues were also invited to add their service excellence grievances to ‘Room 101’ and suggested how improvements could be made through simple actions. It was a great opportunity to share our common values and for attendees to assert that service excellence is everyone’s responsibility.
With every Service Excellence Conference BU strives to reduce our environmental impact and this includes keeping the use of single use plastic – such as balloons, decorations and conference give-aways – to a minimum. As part of this commitment delegates were asked to donate much needed items to a local food bank; we were overwhelmed by the response and over five crates of much needed items were given to Faithworks Wessex.
Overall the conference was a very positive way to end 2018 and begin 2019 full of enthusiasm to continue practicing our Service excellence actions and living our BU Values.
References
Devis-Rozental, C., 2018. Developing socio-emotional intelligence in higher education scholars. London: Palgrave.
Todres, L., Galvin, K. T. and Holloway, I., 2009. The humanization of healthcare: A value framework for qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 4 (2), 68-77.
Todres, L. and Galvin, K, T., 2008. Embodied interpretation: A novel way of evocatively re-presenting meanings in phenomenological research. Qualitative Research, 8 (5), 568
