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Our strategy guides us to explore, expand and evolve
Here we describe what our goals and enablers are and how we intend to reach those goals. This is how we create value for our stakeholders.
Our guiding light on this journey is our 2015-2025 strategy, which sets the overall framework within which we seek to attain the specific objectives in our Annual Performance Plan – the map to help us reach these.
Explaining our strategy
In the following diagram, we depict how our identity (purpose, dream and brand promise) drives our strategy, which informs our long-term goals and enablers. Each year, we review and agree on our annual objectives that we capture in our Annual Performance Plan. These objectives anchor the broad direction in concrete actions through which we explore, expand and evolve.
See how we explore, expand and evolve
The NWU’s research on the genetic data of the nine lovebird species (genus Agapronis) that are native to Africa and Madagascar has been included in a comprehensive international bird study.
This accomplishment is in line with our dream to be an internationally recognised university in Africa.
The research has also led to a patent and the possible commercialisation of a genomic test developed by the NWU that will be of great value to conservationists and parrot breeders.
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Annual Performance Plan
Internationally recognised
Engaged scholarship
Social responsiveness
Ethic of care
Innovative learning and teaching
Cutting-edge research
Benefitting society through
knowledge
Dynamic
Values-driven
Excellent
Revision
Realised through- Promote excellent learning and teaching and reposition the NWU to attain the size and shape required by the market direction decisions.
- Intensify research and innovation.
- Integrate and align community engagement with core activities (teaching and learning and research) and promote sustainability principles.
- Develop a clearly differentiated student value proposition.
- Develop and retain excellent staff and create an equitable staff and student profile.
Linked to
RISK REGISTER- Govern, lead and manage in a sustainable and transformed way with an effective operating model.
- Develop best in class information and communications technology to support the core business.
- Communicate, engage and develop core business capability to increase brand equity, leadership efficacy, and community solidarity.
- Ensure the financial sustainability of the NWU.
Linked toFINANCIAL PLANMeasured by
Contact student success rate
International student enrolment
First-time entrant dropout rate for contact degrees
Publications per permanent academic staff member
Student: academic staff FTE ratio
Permanent academic staff with PhDs
Contact undergraduate graduation duration factor
Weighted research output
Student mix: contact and distance
Five goals to realise our strategy
Quality is embedded in all aspects of teaching and learning, and an excellent and aligned learning experience is available across our campuses and modes of provision.
Always ready to explore new trends and expand our vision of the world of work, we often revise our academic programmes to ensure relevance and augment the work-integrated learning and service learning components within modules. More broadly, we are re-imagining the shape and size of our PQM. Through these efforts, we enhance the quality and workreadiness of our graduates.
Our academics and professional teaching and learning support units provide accessible and appropriate student support in a variety of formats.
We promote the scholarship of teaching and learning among our academic staff and conduct ethically sound research on the curriculum, student learning and assessment, among others.
Short learning programmes are now also available in the online environment. This, and the growth in the number of our short learning programmes, provides professional services to the community while creating third-stream income for the university.
During the year, we successfully concluded the evaluations for research funding applications to the National Research Foundation (NRF), Medical Research Council (MRC) and similar bodies. Research funding opportunities were widely publicised on NWU online platforms as they were received.
We managed the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) and made progress with establishing the joint Namibia-RSA chair, which is another example of our the action we are taking to expand and evolve to become more than we were before.
Researchers and students attended briefing and training sessions on funding and ethics, and we concluded research grants. We explored and evaluated the NWU research landscape, research funding mechanisms and research project portfolio in light of the pandemic, and pursued a holistic strategy for the internationalisation of research.
The integration of community engagement into teaching and learning and research provides an opportunity to develop a culture where we share knowledge and expertise and, on the other hand, we learn from the community.
Work-integrated learning and service learning through discipline-based outreach and research are undertaken in the community, and we encourage staff and students to volunteer in communities, thereby enhancing their social responsiveness.
We have a responsibility towards the environment; it is for this reason that we embark on different projects such as maintaining green campuses and promoting waste management, electricity savings and recycling awareness.
We continually implement projects to enhance our student value proposition. However, only some of the planned projects and programmes went ahead in 2020 (for instance the development of a Student Life Policy) while others were put on hold as a result of the pandemic.
As we are eager to evolve and explore new opportunities to enhance student life, we pursued the use of multi-modal approaches – including innovative digital platforms – in the provisioning of student life experience.
By striving for staff and student equity, we promote social justice and diversity on all campuses.
The Residence Department has introduced an online application process for all three campuses, enabling better control over placements.
All our residences are expected to reflect our enrolment targets for 2025 by following the plans and processes put in place for this purpose.
Council has approved our new Employment Equity Plan, which complies with all the Department of Labour’s requirements. The new plan focuses on removing barriers to the recruitment of people from the designated groups and people living with disabilities. It also addresses succession planning for key positions, retention strategies and the establishment of an enabling organisational culture.
Four enablers to help us realise our strategy
We have an integrated and holistic approach to ensuring the realisation of the 2015 – 2025 NWU Strategy.
Our management model promotes accountability across divisions to achieve organisational outcomes, and our values influence our policy framework at all levels of operation.
Keeping to the theme of this report, namely to explore, expand and evolve, we have adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic by fast-tracking our digital business strategy. We believe that the implementation of this strategy will enable us to evolve in the way in which govern, manage and lead in future.
We are incorporating the digital experience gained during the Covid-19 pandemic into the future-proofing of our operations.
We will use our digital business strategy to create new competitive advantages and make technology/digital transformation a core component of the NWU strategy.
Our high-quality IT capabilities kept the NWU running throughout the pandemic and we will use the lessons learnt to inform our ongoing digital transformation.
We are aware of the importance of ensuring stable, scalable, hybrid, manageable and responsive infrastructure, and of establishing the Next Generation Digital Environment (NGDE) as part of the long-term integration platform. (The NGDE is a modern integration platform and one of the basic building blocks for digital transformation.)
We will focus on maximising business agility, ensuring a secure digital environment and building the technology ecosystem that integrates students, partners, employees and things.
Our intention is to deliver exceptional customer experience and establish a responsive operating model known for flexibility, competent people, best practices, innovative culture and well-looked-after staff.
The way we weathered the financial storm caused by the Covid-19 pandemic is another example demonstrating our resilience and proactive spirit to explore, expand and evolve.
The financial impact model and mitigation plan was developed to respond to the possible impact of Covid-19, together with a three-year rolling budget for 2021 to 2023. The intention is to ensure medium and long-term sustainability, with a focus on cash flow management for the shorter term.
The impact of remote learning on infrastructure projects was carefully considered in order to optimise capital investment and cash flow management.
The Continuing Education Strategic Project is expected to optimise and expand our continuing education income.
We are also making good progress with the facility optimisation project to increase effective use of our buildings and facilities.
We continue to develop and implement appropriate communication and engagement strategies targeting specific stakeholder groups. We build partnerships to implement these strategies to achieve optimal value.
Our partnerships with stakeholders such as staff, alumni and students play a key role in enhancing our brand, especially in terms of digital media platforms.
We continuously evaluate our performance and work towards finding the most reliable performance measurement tools for our marketing communication initiatives to ensure maximum return on investment.
Annual Performance Plan
How the Annual Performance Plan fits in with our strategy
The Annual Performance Plan (APP) sets out what we must do annually to implement our strategy so that we ultimately deliver value to all our stakeholders and support national priorities.
The five goals and four enablers drive the implementation of our strategy, along with key performance indicators to measure our progress towards implementation.
How the APP was revised in 2020
We identified risks and opportunities that were likely to impact the NWU in the short, medium and long term. This information was then used to draw up an updated situation analysis to inform the further development of the NWU strategy, as well as the APP.
An external situation analysis of the structure and competitive nature of the higher education landscape equips management and Council with a broad overview of issues that will impact on the implementation of the NWU strategy and budget priorities.
An assessment of our major risks and opportunities informed our performance objectives for 2020. This assessment took into account variables relating to market size and growth, our customers, the impact of technology on teaching and learning, our income, capital and funding, and our relationships with communities. These factors are likely to have an impact on the university both in the near future and in the longer term.
Future outlook
There are two assumptions concerning Covid-19 that underpin our planning: first, that Covid-19 will not disappear in the near future, and that we will continue to function within a regime of (health-related) caution, and second, that vaccines will take time to develop and roll out globally.
Covid-19 has also accelerated the implementation of our digital business strategy. Our future digital platform for the university will integrate students, partners, employees and things, in order to connect people to contextualised information and services.
The vehicles for this will be modern digital delivery channels and a resilient integration platform sitting on top of stable, hybrid, responsive, manageable and secure infrastructure and enabling systems. These will support our business and operating models, provide analytics-driven insights and enable exceptional customer experience, in order to differentiate this university from others.
The expectation is that a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, explore new possibilities, expand our way of thinking and evolve in how we do things, might be a key contributor to realising strategies in future.
