17 Aside from the obvious financial drivers behind estates risks, hybrid study and working patterns continue to impact space usage, alongside significantly more students choosing to live at home and commute. As noted at 3.2 above, while many institutions have struggled to meet recruitment targets, some have substantially increased their undergraduate intake, resulting in different space utilisation challenges. All these factors point to institutions needing to be able to take a much more agile approach to planning, managing, and adapting the size and utilisation of their estates to continue to provide a welcoming, safe, and fit-for-purpose environment for students, academics, professional services, and visitors. This requires much better data and analysis about the estate, its condition, and its utilisation than has traditionally been available. While some institutions have invested in occupancy sensors and digital planning tools, there are wide disparities in the availability of the data and insight that institutions need to inform choices about “rightsizing” (e.g. refurbishment, repurposing, disposal or new build), as well as to prioritise maintenance and improvement activities. While estates is likely to be the primary responsibility of a different committee, we recommend that the audit committee should: • Ensure that estates risks are reflected in the strategic risk register if there is significant under utilisation of space or significant space constraints, and/or maintenance and investment challenges; • Satisfy themselves where and how second and third line assurance is obtained on the effectiveness of controls, and particularly the effective alignment and review of student recruitment scenarios and forecasts with estates and space utilisation plans; • Seek assurance on the quality, completeness, accuracy, and frequency of estates and space utilisation data used to inform strategic decision-making; and • Ensure that value for money reporting addresses estates and space utilisation and energy efficiency. 2.5 University employees/staff lifecycle: ranked joint 9th inherent and 6th residual Risk findings: In comparison with five years ago, risks relating to the staff lifecycle appear on almost all university risk registers. Risks cover business as usual activities around recruiting, developing and retaining the right people and realising equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) ambitions, and increasingly, risks to morale, productivity and high quality teaching and research arising from restructuring and reductions in headcount. This includes risks around staff workload, wellbeing, motivation and performance and by extension, employee relations risks. Both inherent and residual average risk scores have increased this year, with a wider variation appearing in normalised inherent scores. This variation is likely to reflect differing financial positions of institutions and the extent of reductions in their workforce. Mitigation activities and controls necessarily reflect local circumstances and include: • Growing emphasis on people strategy, workforce planning and succession planning; • Strengthening employee relations, staff engagement and staff wellbeing initiatives; • Planned and structured approaches to headcount reduction, with emphasis on engagement and support for both departing and retained staff; • Review of recruitment and reward activities, career pathways, and performance frameworks; • EDI strategy and initiatives; • Expanding management information and frequency of reporting on key staff metrics; and • Leadership and management development.
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