The Story Behind the Achievement
The Story of Turner and "
" at The Hague University of Applied Sciences
This year, we can call ourselves the No. 1 strategy consulting firm and have the highest client satisfaction rating of all consulting firms. What lies behind this achievement—both ours and that of our clients? In the series “The Story Behind the Achievement,” we speak with Rob Soekhlal, interim manager of the faculty office, and Christian Brouwer, a professor at the teacher training college. How has Turner helped improve collaboration between teaching and education support staff? And how does that benefit the students?
The Story of The Hague University of Applied Sciences
The Hague University of Applied Sciences is a comprehensive university with approximately 27,000 students representing more than 140 nationalities. At the Faculty of Social Work & Education, more than 2,000 students are studying social work, pedagogy, and elementary teacher education (PABO), and research is conducted on topics such as global education and diversity in education. The faculty office is there to support education and research. Nevertheless, teaching and educational support staff feel that matters could be organized more effectively and efficiently. However—partly due to the high workload—there is little time to give this serious thought. It is a vicious cycle that does not bode well for interpersonal relationships.
Unclear Responsibilities
Rob Soekhlal, interim manager of the faculty office, asks consultants Martijn Walvis and Jeffrey Koop to help break this cycle. Rob: “I’ve asked them to map out the educational support processes and identify the bottlenecks and areas for improvement in each process—together with everyone involved, including both faculty and educational support staff. In my experience, many problems arise from unclear roles and responsibilities.”
This rings true for PABO instructor Christian Brouwer as well. As a member of the testing and examination committee, he works closely with the faculty office: “Resolving relatively minor issues can easily take 20 emails. Think of a student who registered for the wrong exam or wants to review a test after the review period has ended. Because it’s not clear who’s responsible for what, we keep creating our own problems. And so the student ends up being sent from pillar to post.”
"Services" on paper
In digital workshops, we work with faculty members, their team leaders, and staff from the faculty office to map out the processes. What are these processes actually supposed to achieve? What obstacles stand in the way? By mapping this out together, we also gain insight into the common challenges. This not only improves the process but also enhances mutual collaboration. We compile the results into a process model: a single, comprehensive overview of the faculty office’s “services.” Clarity at last.
Rob: “Because both education support staff and teaching staff were involved in the workshops, both groups can relate to the description of the processes and the identified challenges. That’s important because it allows us all to commit to this way of working and to the potential for improvement that we see.”
Identifying bottlenecks together not only improves the process but also enhances mutual collaboration. Clarity at last.
The review process as a bottleneck
It becomes clear early on that there are many structural problems in the assessment and examination process. This is precisely why this process is so important: after all, a great deal is at stake for students, and there are many legal requirements. That’s why the team is taking a closer look at this process, together with everyone involved—from faculty members to administrative staff to program managers. What exactly are the problems? What are the underlying causes of those problems? And—of course—what solutions do we see?
Christian: “Martijn and Jeffrey tackled this very thoroughly; for every problem, they kept asking ‘why?’ That’s how we discovered that several problems kept having the same root cause. And that there were also problems with multiple root causes. Very enlightening.” All themes, bottlenecks, root causes, improvement ideas, actions, and responsibilities were compiled into a handy improvement list. In essence, it was the improvement plan for this process.
"Quick wins" and tough cases
Christian: “Many problems turned out to be surprisingly easy to solve. Let’s send students an instructional video on how to register for exams. Or: let’s include the review period for tests in our annual calendar as well. But of course, there are also more complex issues that require new policies.”
Two of these challenging issues—familiar to many colleges—required extra attention: fraud detection and online testing. Christian: “How do we ensure that instructors know the right steps to take to identify plagiarism? What steps should a instructor take if they suspect plagiarism? When is reporting mandatory? And when it comes to online assessments: as an instructor, when should you use which type of assessment? What can you leave to specialized software—and what shouldn’t you? Now that we have a clear overview again, we can develop very targeted policies for these issues.”
Reclaiming Time
With so many stakeholders and so many processes to go through, how do you ensure that an improvement initiative like this delivers sufficient results? Rob explains: “Yes, we’ve put a lot of time into going through all the processes. And yes, of course that put an extra burden on everyone involved. But it’s an investment that’s going to help us all. In return, we’ll have more effective and efficient processes. And—which is ultimately what matters to us—we’ll be helping students better.”
Christian adds: “After 28 years in Education, I’ve become quite skeptical about improvement initiatives. All too often, they take up a lot of my time as a teacher and yield only superficial insights. Martijn and Jeffrey, on the other hand, worked incredibly hard to take the pressure off us. At every meeting, there was a solid document we could use to get to work. And at the end, they always took back the reins. That worked out really well.”
“It’s always great to see: by diving into the content together, you also build mutual understanding and trust.”
– Martijn Walvis, organizational consultant at Turner
Martijn Walvis, a consultant at Turner: “It’s really great to hear how Rob and Christian experienced the collaboration. It’s always cool to see how, by diving into the content together, you also build more mutual understanding and trust.”
Jeffrey Koop, consultant at Conclusion Implementation: “Multidisciplinary collaboration has once again proven its worth. It’s great to see how bringing together different perspectives has led to joint solutions.”
Turner is number 1 on the MT1000 list. What’s the story behind this impressive achievement? We’d love to tell you more.
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