Planning and governance
As a manager, you need to understand your responsibilities and contribution to strategic and operational planning, risk and emergency management and budget and asset management.
Operational plans
Charles Sturt University is governed by the Charles Sturt University Act 1989 No 76 and the Charles Sturt University By-law 2005. The University Strategy 2022 provides our overarching objectives. Operational plans should align with these objectives and provide staff with a clear picture of their priorities, tasks and responsibilities for the year.
Initiatives and improvements
Initiatives and Improvement Plans outline the four to five key initiatives and improvements for the Faculty, School, Division or Office. There are also supporting action plans developed at University and/or the business unit levels that compliment these core plans. These include:
- Your Voice action plans arising from the biennial Your Voice staff culture climate survey
- workforce plans
- Workplace Gender Equity Strategy action plan
- Disability action plan
- Indigenous Employment Strategy
- LiFE Framework sustainability actions
- various project action plans.
University statistics and business intelligence
The Office of Strategic Planning and Information (SPI), supports the University strategy and is responsible for University statistics and business intelligence.
SPI provides managers with a range of products to facilitate sharing of business intelligence to support informed decision making. Some data and analytics are maintained in other areas such as learning and teaching analytics, which are managed by the Division of Learning and Teaching.
Governance
The Office of Governance and Corporate Administration is responsible for coordinating the governance of the University and provides governance and advisory services including:
Risk management
Effective risk management is necessary for competent decision making and the conduct of efficient, effective and robust business processes. These processes allow us to appropriately mitigate risks and identify and manage opportunities.
Managers have a responsibility to consider, manage and reduce exposure to high level risks. The University is committed to managing risk well.
Faculties, Divisions and Offices are required to maintain an accurate risk register for their area. These registers are aggregated up to regularly report high level risks threatening the University to the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee, a subcommittee of University Council.
Emergency management
In your role as a manger, you may also be required to lead or assist with managing an emergency. You may also be involved in the Critical Incidence Response Group.
You should familiarise yourself with the University’s emergency procedures by reading about Emergency Management.
Budget and asset management
Managers are accountable for managing the finances and assets of their business unit and contributing to University’s financial position overall. This includes:
- actively pursuing ways to increase University income
- containing expenses
- effectively deploying and maintaining University assets.
The Division of Finance provides the support, information and resources you require to successfully manage your budget. Authority for budget management is determined by Schedule 2 – Financial Delegations and Schedule 3 – Expenditure Delegations of the Delegations and Authorisation Policy. The expenditure delegations authority is a live list on the Division of Finance website of who currently has authority to sign off on expenditure for different organisation codes. Managers need to need to make sure this list is updated in line with staff turnover.