WEBSITE:
https://manchester.ac.uk
HEADQUARTERS:
Manchester
INDUSTRY:
Higher Education
FEATURES USED:
Data Capture
Data Measurement
Staff Engagement
OpenAPI
The University of Manchester has a global reputation of being at the forefront of research. They are taking sustainability seriously and chose to partner with Impact to measure their pro-social and environmental initiatives.
In November 2016, the University of Manchester launched 10,000 Actions, the biggest environmental sustainability initiative in the UK higher education sector. 10,000 Actions helps every member of staff take positive action on environmental sustainability and has resulted in the University being hailed as the first ‘Carbon Literate’ university in the world. It challenges all 10,000+ staff to perform at least one action on sustainability.
The University of Manchester is the first UK university to make social responsibility a core strategic goal. To demonstrate what social responsibility means, they identified a set of distinctive signature programmes, monitored and evaluated by Impact to address a series of social challenges where they could make the greatest impact.
Platform Concept
The University of Manchester came to us with an updated concept for a staff engagement platform to support the 10,000 actions initiative, centred around committing to and taking action on sustainability. They wanted to promote all of the engagement opportunities at the University in one place and to connect staff to their research, allow them to learn about sustainability whilst also measuring their engagement and activities around sustainability.
The concept of 10,000 Actions was first conceived as a response to the city of Manchester’s aspirations for everyone who lives, works or studies in Manchester to receive ‘carbon literacy’ training.
As the university had such a large and diverse workforce, they needed a platform that was intrinsically usable by everyone, could reach all members of staff and appeal to a wide variety of job roles and functions that they have. Impact provided the online platform, support and guidance to turn the concept into a reality.
The Impact team helped us deliver the biggest environmental sustainability initiative in the higher education sector, and they continue to help us evolve it to adapt to our changing needs.
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“With previous systems, we noticed staff were committing to actions but not recording them when they were completed, Impact has helped motivate staff and we’re now able to measure the effect of our actions on the environment and society“
Lucy Millard, Environmental Sustainability Manager
Staff Engagement
In addition to the measurement and evaluation of sustainable activities, The University of Manchester also makes heavy use of Impacts engagement and gamification features to increase the amount of data captured from staff and encourage a more productive workforce.
Through gamification, the university encourages staff groups to team up and complete goals and actions that work to improve the environmental performance of their workplace/department throughout the year. Activities and actions are logged inside Impact and each action is assigned a score. Teams work towards achieving an award at the end of the measurement cycle.
Typical activities included in the platform are actions to reduce carbon in line with a commitment to be zero carbon by 2038, reduce avoidable single-use plastic usage and sustainable travel. Impact automatically maps activities to the UN Sustainable Development Goals so staff members and teams can easily see how their contributions are supporting the university and society as a whole.
10,000 Actions Results
Since deploying Impact, The University of Manchester has seen an impressive 55% staff engagement rate with the initiatives, with previous staff engagement on environmental sustainability programmes reaching only 3%. They have also enjoyed financial savings:
The increased functionality gained by using Impact has been very well received and has moved the perception of 10,000 Actions from being a one-off activity to an ongoing engagement programme.
Everything you need to measure social value
Our social value tool removes siloed working and disorganised spreadsheets of data. Use Impact to create a unified, joined-up approach towards social value measurement and evaluation across your whole organisation that saves you time, makes you look good and cuts reporting busywork!