The Empowerment project team representing all of us has now talked with a number of teams across Learning Resources about Empowerment in the workplace.  From that we’ve identified a range of possible initiatives.  The Design Thinking process we are following advocates trying out a few of these initiatives in a low-level way as prototypes to see if they have any merit.

The team would like to share a “FedEx Day” initiative to see if there is any interest.  Library staff are good at ideas (for example the brainstorm sessions and the ideas padlet) – what if we had time and support to deliver on them?  We think empowering staff to follow through on their innovative ideas is a constructive thing to do as well as supporting our operational plan goal to foster a culture of innovation.

A “FedEx Day” is an opportunity for a team to work on an idea they might have for delivering innovation to the wider University or within the Library and be released from their regular work to do this.  Participation is completely optional/voluntary to form a team.  There are only two rules: a) the idea the team works on should deliver innovation to the wider University, Library or a team within the Library, and b) that the team presents or reports on how the day went.  We also need to be clear there are resource constraints such as no $$ for working on an innovative idea.

Library managers have been briefed on this idea and they are supportive.

Interested?
If you think this might be of interest, have a chat about it with your colleagues and bounce around some ideas.  Once you’ve got an interested group and would like to take the next step, contact Caroline Anderson or Tim Stedman who are your representatives on the Empowerment project team and can provide assistance.  They are also available for more information.

Timeframes

• Organize a 1-2 hour kick off with participants two weeks in advance to ensure schedules are free and for each person to present their ideas before the FedEx Day
• Have a clear start and end of the FedEx Day, eg from 8:30am to 4:30pm, or from 12pm Monday to 12pm Tuesday
• Book a time the following day to demonstrate the results

Reference
Lighting Corporate Passion: Everything you need to know about FedEx Day