Effective Collaboration with Students’ Unions (SUs)
Students’ Unions (SU) are a vital stakeholder in the student experience. Not only are SUs responsible for crucial elements of student life, such as societies and sporting activities; they also act as the voice of students on the institutional level, providing a vital channel of communication between university staff and the students they support.
For universities looking to enhance the student experience and deliver an impactful student success strategy, SUs are central to implementing change that can reach students at the ground level. Whether its improving responses to misconduct, providing more equitable opportunities across the institution or enhancing the teaching and learning experience, SUs are uniquely positioned to articulate the needs of students and coordinate impactful strategies alongside the university.
However, tapping into that wealth of knowledge and resource is not always straightforward. Universities and SUs alike cite issues with the slow pace of institutional processes, a lack of transparency around strategy and a tendency to treat student representation as a box ticking exercise, rather than a powerful source for driving change.
In this article, we explore several ways universities can improve and enhance the way they work with their SUs in order to augment the student experience. We take a look at examples of innovative initiatives and partnerships with SUs across the sector to explore how collaboration can be made more effective and long-lasting.
Taking Accountability and Committing to Change
In the face of growing challenges – such as sexual harassment on campus and the rising cost of living for students – getting students to trust an institution and its processes can be challenging. When universities fail to meet the needs and demands of students in these arenas, it can be demoralising for students who watch their institutions fail to take accountability for their actions and commit to being better.
Institutions have a hard time doing this because they fear for their reputation. However, transparency, clear recognition of past failure, and commitment to being better in the future can positively transform relationships between universities and their students.
But what does taking accountability look like? SUs can act as a bridge in this process, and also need to be held to account themselves. Key questions to consider include:
What systems are in place for students and SUs to raise issues with the university and members of staff?
How are these systems for reporting reviewed and adapted accordingly, and how can students and SUs be involved in this process?
What systems to SUs use to communicate with the wider student body and are there mechanisms in place for officers to be held accountable by their peers?
How is change communicated to SUs and students when it is implemented?
How can both the university and the SU effectively use their channels of communication to ensure that the feedback loop is effectively closed?
In what areas can we be more transparent about the working relationship between the university and the SU, to ensure students understand the process and their place in it?
The University of York’s SU includes an Accountability and Scrutiny Chair, who is elected to ensure officers are working in the best interests of the student body. Taking this even further, LSE’s SU held a 3-day summit that allowed students to participate in a deliberative process and make recommendations to the SU around structural reform, transparency, accessibility and student engagement. These initiatives have created the opportunity for students to really observe in how change is delivered and participate in the process, allowing reform to become student-led and really respond to the needs and desires of the wider student body.
So, many SUs already have processes in place that enable them to be held accountable for their actions. Universities can tap into this practical knowledge, learning ways that they can be more accountable for actions, commit to future change – and, ultimately, increase student trust in institutional processes. And, when students trust the process, they are more likely to be satisfied with their experience.
Your SU can also help you to identify errors and make relevant adjustments – which will not only fix issues in the short term, but also help to support a smooth, fair decision-making process.
Closing the Feedback Loop
A common pitfall for enhancing the student journey is failure to ‘close the feedback loop’. It’s not enough to receive feedback from students and implement changes. Students need to understand the implications of their feedback and how the university is taking it into account. This is a vital part of building trust in the institution as it helps them to know that their views are taken seriously and indicate that they are important stakeholders in institutional life.
This is where your SU come in – as communicators. Through collaboration and data sharing, you can ensure that actions driven by the student voice are fed back to the community. This might look like:
The University of Greenwich is working with its SU to enhance feedback and communication, which includes a series of actions informed by their Representation Strategy, including developing democratic and representation structures to have consistent, high quality and impactful student involvement.
Refining and reviewing your data sharing agreement to make sure your SU representatives have access to relevant information that can be fed back to the study body. This may also help you identify other areas for change – Edge Hill University recently led a review of their data sharing agreement with their SU, which led to significant improvements in their student engagement strategy.
Identifying clear strategies and protocols for Student Reps to inform students of institutional decisions. The University of Sheffield’s SU outlines key ways their Reps can communicate results back to students.
SUs can also point to areas where universities can be more transparent about actions they’ve taken. The University of Surrey’s SU, for example, worked with the institution to ensure the anonymous results of misconduct cases, to increase student faith in and understanding of disciplinary processes. Many universities also use anonymous reporting tools that provide a certain level of transparency to these processes, such as Report + Support.
Be aware of survey fatigue and ensure your SU choose carefully when to ask students to engage. Students can easily tire of being asked the same questions – and, often, not receiving a response – so each survey campaign should be accompanied by a strategy to communicate outcomes to students.
Through a range of collaborative strategies with your SU, you can close the feedback loop to build greater trust in the institution and develop improved communication processes with your students. By ensuring student voice is heard across the whole university with the support of your SU, you can ensure the changes you are delivering are really responding to the needs and concerns of your student body – and effectively enhance the student journey.
Empowering your SU
While consultation is important, it is not enough – students should be actively involved in initiatives to enact institutional change.
SUs are a great place to start with co-creation initiatives, as the students are generally extremely engaged and also elected by their fellow students to represent their interests.
It’s also worth noting that representation requires action in order to be effective. SU officers that participate in Steering Committees, Working Groups or other forms of institutional collaboration need to feel empowered to speak freely, and to know that their opinion is valued in that space.
When students are empowered to speak truth to the university, opportunities to drive change inevitably arise. The University of Manchester’s Resist Rape Culture campaign is an emphatic example – students deliberately and provocatively presented demands to the university, backed up by evidence from their own research. The campaign is now an ongoing collaboration between the university and its SU to improve the handling of sexual misconduct in the university and provide better support for victims and survivors.
Ideas for how you might work to empower your SU officers further include:
Provide recognition of SU officers when they do good work. This doesn’t have to be in the form of financial support (although some universities have gone down this route) but could be an awards system. For inspiration, look to the University of Derby and the University of Westminster.
Take on their ideas – it sounds obvious, but it’s fundamental! For inspiration, take a look at how the University of Portsmouth supported an SU officer to pilot a peer-assisted learning programme.
Arrange opportunities for student officers to network across the institution. Not only will this be beneficial to their personal development, but it will also help them to effectively work across the institution and build relationships with key members of staff and in the local community. This could include creating working groups with relevant members of staff, as the University of Sussex did, to ensure projects are pushed forward and have consistent support. The NUS Charity also recently launched a network for all SU Officers across the UK.
Grant union officers the power to design and run their own events without micro-managing, while also offering them support where needed.
By ensuring your officers feel empowered, you will be able to see more ideas pushed through and more positive change enacted. As a result, you can make sure the student union is effectively serving the needs of the wider student body, enhancing that student experience and building a dynamic, collaborative relationship with your union.
Embed Collaboration into Organisational Strategy
Collaborating with SUs on a range of projects to improve the student experience is important, but this alone doesn’t account for the changeability of that experience. With a fresh cohort every three years and changing sabbatical officers and representatives, universities also have to ensure they put in place mechanisms for collaboration in the long-term.
Embedding your commitment to collaboration and strategies for co-working with your SU into organisational strategy can support this.
We can look to the University of Strathclyde for an example of how collaboration is prioritised in their institutional strategy. At the end of 2022, they agreed a 3-year strategic alliance with their SU, which promised a closer collaborative relationship and identified a host of shared objectives between the two stakeholder groups – accompanied, crucially, by key deliverables. While we will have to wait until 2025 to see how they are delivered, what’s noticeable about this agreement is that each objective is clearly outlined, with a number of deliverables, any projected costs and responsiblities. This means that the university and the SU are not proposing a vague commitment to collaborative working, but a clear list of actions that make up an institutional strategy, for which different members of both parties can be held accountable.
Another strategy to ensure collaborative working with SUs is built into your institutional strategy is to ensure that projects have buy-in from senior leadership. This can even lead to longevity for those projects beyond the changing cycles of union reps.
For example, Nottingham Trent University launched their Black Leadership Programme in 2020 in collaboration with a former NTUSU sabbatical officer and as part of their Race Equality Action Plan. However, the project is still running, and even growing, at the university. Afua, the former sabbatical officer, cites the driving force from the university’s Vice Chancellor as a vital factor in the initiative’s longevity. By sitting down with students and giving them the opportunity to speak freely, students felt they were being heard by the ‘right’ person; that is, someone in a position from which they can enact change. This, in turn, can only improve the student experience – by making them feel seen and heard.
So that you can assess the quality of your collaboration, we’ve put together a checklist of crucial elements for strong collaboration
A common goal shared by both the university and the union
Clearly defined roles and responsibilities within the partnership
Open and transparent, communication, as well as an easy way to share resources and ideas
Trust that both parties are committed and capable of carrying out their part
Opportunities to review and feedback on the partnership
A system of accountability for when goals are not met
Towards a Collaborative Future
Working effectively with your SU should form an essential part of your institutional student experience strategy. Not only are these bodies well placed to represent the views of students and communicate institutional efforts back to their peers; they’re also an important sounding board for what the university is doing correctly – and a source of accountability in areas where processes can be improved.
However, it’s important to remember that SUs cannot possibly represent the diversity of your entire student body; and, beyond that, the idea of ‘the’ student experience in itself is something of a myth – your energies instead should be focused on how you can enhance the multitude of student experiences in your institution. This will become increasingly important as the student body continues to transform over time, with the growing number of underrepresented groups attending university and you might even consider how you can adapt the strategies in this article to engage not only SUs, but the student body at large.
To find out more about how you can support student experience and satisfaction, browse our upcoming events, which you can attend as part of your HE Professional membership.
