VPPL reorganisation: background

As you’ll recall, ETH President Joël Mesot announced in September 2020 that, as part of rETHink, the Executive Board was being expanded to include two new vice presidencies: one for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations and one for Personnel Development and Leadership. The latter has had Dr. Julia Dannath at its helm since November 2020. This new Executive Board domain was created from existing outstanding units and combines expertise and structures that were built up at ETH over the course of many years. “For that, we are very grateful to Ulrich Weidmann and Lukas Vonesch. They led most of these teams and did an excellent job of developing them over the years,” Dannath stresses. For a number of reasons, however, a good six months after launching VPPL, it was time to rethink the existing structures.

Why reorganise?

“At the start of my tenure as vice president, my main focus was on gaining an overview of my domain and what internal and external requirements and expectations we need to meet,” Dannath says, summing up the early days of VPPL. “In those first months, I had many conversations, I listened and I learned about numerous interfaces and overarching ETH processes. This gave me a good sense of the organisation that is ETH, and how it fits into the greater whole.”

After a solid foundation was established, it soon became clear that VPPL needed to be reorganised in order to provide optimum support for the ETH Zurich 2021–2024 strategy and development plan, as well as to address a variety of challenges. These challenges include global developments, such as the growing importance of diversity and equality of opportunity, as well as the Swiss political landscape (e.g. the ERI Dispatch, which is aimed at promoting digitalisation, continuing education and equity of opportunity over the next several years).

The reorganisation journey begins

For these reasons, in mid-2021, VPPL began the reorganisation process with support from an external consulting firm. “This support and reflection by external professionals was extremely valuable,” Dannath says, explaining the process.

Taking a workshop-based approach, selected representatives from VPPL attended four workshops in which they developed the design and the detailed structure of the new organisation. The crucial question that guided their work was what capabilities VPPL needs to have to best support the entire ETH Zurich organisation going forward. What they came up are these seven items:

1.      Professional development offerings for professors
Training and strengthening professors in their leadership role.

2.      Executive support for professors
Providing professors with the best possible personal support throughout their career.

3.     Diversity and equal opportunity
Valuing diversity and actively taking advantage of it as an opportunity to achieve better research results.

4.      Professional development offerings for technical and administrative staff (in both leadership and staff roles)
Imparting interdisciplinary skills.

5.      HR consulting as equals for the academic departments and the central administrative units
Providing personnel and personnel services.

6.      Standardisation, efficiency and automation for HR services
Ensuring high quality at low cost.

7.      Advisory services in conflict situations and/or situations involving inappropriate conduct
Finding solutions before situations escalate.

VPPL focus issues

These seven requirements of the new VPPL organisation are also reflected in the focus issues that were defined for VPPL:

• Lifelong learning: Expanding development opportunities for all occupational categories (academic/technical/administrative) and strengthening leadership skills at all levels (executive management / non-faculty scientific staff).
• Strengthening inclusion and, with it, diversity (especially promoting women) and better embedding this in the organisation.
• Progressive professionalisation of conflict management
• Further development and digitalisation/automation of HR processes

The new structure

The outcome of the overall reorganisation journey is a structure made up of five administrative departments and the Personnel Development and Leadership staff unit that goes into effect on 1 January 2022:

“It is important to me for this transformation to be purely content driven,” Dannath says, commenting on the new VPPL structure. “This reorganisation was and is explicitly not aimed at downsizing. And one thing I am particularly pleased about is that all management positions for administrative departments will be filled by internal staff. This means that we are not only keeping existing expertise in our domain, but we are also promoting the in-house talent we already have.”

What happens next?

The new VPPL organisation does not take effect until the start of the new year. However, in the weeks and months leading up to this, the new department heads, together with Vice President Dannath and Maximilian Buyken, Chief of Staff, will already constitute a new governing body, and this newly formed body will also already hold meetings. “This lets us ensure that decisions will already be taken with the new structure in mind,” Dannath says. “I look forward to working with my colleagues in the new structure to further advance the VPPL focus issues and thereby help ensure that ETH Zurich remains such a great institution – one where all of its members enjoy working, teaching, researching and studying.”