Our strategy to create value
Introduction
In striving for greatness beyond boundaries, we move forward with purpose, creating value for our shareholders as we do so. Our strategy and Annual Performance Plan (APP) keep us orientated and progressing in the right direction.
Our strategy extends over a 10-year period, currently 2015 to 2025, while our APP is for 12 months, in this case 1 January to 31 December 2023.
Explaining our strategy
In September 2023, Council approved the new NWU Strategy: Taking the NWU forward – 2024 and beyond, which formed the basis for the 2024 APP.
For the new strategy cycle, the NWU has defined key strategy pillars. These pillars focus both on the university’s interests and on stakeholder and community interests.
OUR MISSION
To benefit society through the
provision of knowledge, excelling in
innovative teaching, cutting-edge
research and focused engagement
with the community.
OUR VISION
To discover new frontiers and
opportunities that benefit society,
advancing our relevance and impact.
OUR VALUES
- Caring and inclusive
- Embracing diversity
- Transparency
- Excellence in all our endeavours
- Ethics in all endeavours
- Responsibility and accountability
- Academic freedom and freedom of research
OUR PRIORITIES
- Impact
- Growth
- Diversity
- Partnerships
- Internationalisation
- Operational excellence
OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES
- Sustainability
- Transformation
- Digitisation
- Student centricity
- Valuing our people
We want to promote excellent learning and teaching and reposition the NWU to attain the size and shape required by the market direction decisions.
How we achieve it
Our proven student academic development and support initiatives continue to advance student retention and success.
We are systemically transforming and renewing the curriculum to equip graduates for 21st century challenges.
Our Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) uses research results to enhance its support to the faculties.
While providing professional services to the community, we explore opportunities to generate third-stream income through continuing education offerings.
We ensure that the PQM is responsive, viable and relevant.
Work-integrated learning and service learning are well managed and appropriate, enhancing the employability of our graduates.
It is our goal to strengthen research and innovation with a strategic focus on impactful globalisation.
How we achieve it
We enhance the visibility, impact and footprint of our research by publishing in Scopus/ISI journals, emphasising research integrity, improving our researchers’ NRF ratings and offering joint degrees and co-publishing with researchers from reputable international institutions.
Our 60 research entities include various chairs under the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI).
We successfully concluded the evaluations for research funding applications to the NRF, SAMRC and other local funders, resulting in a range of grants for research and bursaries. In addition, SAMRC, DTI/THRIP and NWU postdoctoral grants were concluded.
Training sessions on funding and ethics for researchers and students were conducted to advance research excellence and Library and Information Services (LIS) arranged workshops and webinars on open access and research data management.
Community engagement that deepens relevance, impact, reputation and sustainability to develop a culture of active citizenship.
How we achieve it
Our campus-based community engagement (CE) forums welcomed 72 new partners, which will boost opportunities for student volunteering, work‑integrated learning and service learning.
In total of 16 different organisational units registered on 500 community engagement activities in 2023.
Almost 40% of these activities involved Engaged-Teaching and Learning and nearly 44% were reported as outreach or volunteerism.
Engaged research comprised 11,6% of registered activities, and 2,2% were recorded as engaged scholarship.
Ten community engagement champions were recognised in November 2023 when the annual awards ceremony was held.
All three campuses celebrated Arbour Day by planting the tree of the year, the Olive Sagewood, as well as fruit trees.
Develop a clearly differentiated student value proposition with a focus on creating an inclusive environment aimed at developing students holistically through structured and unstructured co-curricular programmes which are relevant, desirable and meet students’ needs.
How we achieve it
We continued to focus strongly on supporting students through psycho-social and primary health care services, financial support, accommodation, academic development and support, and social welfare programmes.
We pay close attention to student information management, in line with applicable legislation.
In 2023, staff and student leaders presented proposals on a standardised Student Life programme. This engagement will continue during 2024. Our student leadership model functions effectively, ensuring transparency, assurance and stability within the student domain.
Student safety was again a top priority in 2023. We further strengthened our partnerships with local municipalities, law enforcement agencies and community members.
We want to attract, develop and retain excellent staff and create an equitable staff profile.
How we achieve it
We made progress towards achieving the targets set in the Employment Equity (EE) Plan for 2021 to 2023. As 2023 was the final year of this plan, a Successive EE plan was drafted, consulted on and approved by Council.
The staff cost optimisation project for Phase 1 yielded savings to fund a 1% salary increase across the board.
A resourcing plan was developed, and vacancies were maintained at under 10%.
Members of the University Management Committee (UMC) and Senior Management Committee (SMC) attended the Emotional Intelligence, Digital Transformation and Managing Remotely programmes.
In 2023, we enhanced the People and Culture Digital Transformation Strategy through effective automation and digitisation of the performance management system, digital onboarding, probation management system and hybrid work process.
It is our goal to develop and implement a digital business strategy to create a competitive advantage for the university and ultimately unlock alternative revenue streams.
How we achieve it
Council approved the Digital Business Strategy (DBS) in June 2023, reaffirming the NWU’s position as a future-ready institution.
An Agility Hub has been established to promote innovation and fast-track the adoption of cutting-edge technologies.
Strategic initiatives stemming from the DBS are currently under way, including the renewal of the Student Information System and reviewing the People and Culture (HR) and Payroll systems.
The NWU has entered into a strategic partnership with local and international vendors to provide capacity and expertise to drive implementation of AI-enabled functionality.
(our enablers)
Govern, lead and manage in an agile, collaborative and integrated way towards an optimally digitised university environment.
Effective governance is a competitive advantage for the NWU, which functions as a unitary, integrated, multi-campus university.
We make sure that support services across all sites of delivery function in an integrated and mature way and that the support-staff provisioning is optimised.
All policies and rules are drafted in accordance with the 2017 NWU Statute.
Our integrated risk and compliance management model focuses on business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
Establish a holistic and integrated university technology platform to provide a solid foundation for a digital future.
We are making the transition to cloud computing and software-asa-service (SaaS) models, paving the way for greater scalability, flexibility and cost efficiency.
However, we understand that it will take time to realise the full potential of these new approaches.
Over time, our aim is to leverage digital transformation as a strategic advantage, shifting our focus from basic business operations to a blend of IT and innovation.
Additionally, we are working towards a more integrated approach to cybersecurity and transitioning from a fragmented data infrastructure to a unified analytics strategy and methodology.
Cultivate and deliver stakeholder-focused platforms to create and grow intentional experiences and brand equity.
A positive stakeholder experience presents opportunities for beneficial stakeholder engagements, retention and loyalty. Thus, developing and implementing targeted communication platforms/channels was a priority for 2023.
The interactions with our stakeholders via appropriate channels that lead to intentional experiences play a key role towards enhancing NWU brand equity.
Ensure financial sustainability and optimal performance with due consideration of macro-economic conditions and the drive towards digital transformation.
We focused on our mitigation plan to address the financial and economic impact of Covid-19, and on compiling a three-year rolling budget for 2024 to 2026. The aim is to ensure medium and long-term sustainability, with an emphasis on cash-flow management for the shorter term.
We continued implementing the infrastructure policy on optimal space management.
We implemented projects to measure the impact and efficiency of alternative energy sources.
In line with the NWU’s Environmental Policy, we developed an Environmental Sustainability Management strategy and guidelines.
Several automation projects continued in support of the Digital Business Strategy.
Strategic projects per goal/enabler
The Annual Performance Plan (APP) is an important instrument to realise the NWU strategy and implement strategic projects.
These are projects that impact significantly on the achievement of our goals and the realisation of our strategy, and help determine the university’s overall direction. To see how we financed these strategic initiatives, refer to Our financial capital in the section on our performance against our strategy.
The following summary outlines the strategic projects we are implementing and how they relate to the APP goals and enablers.
- Continuation of the Medical School Project
- Design and development of a digital classroom
- Development of contact-to-online conversion for short learning programmes
- Incentive scheme for intellectual property creators
- Mixed-reality simulation for language and reading teacher education
- Study well project
- Upgrading of MBA facilities
- Business School to consult and develop a PhD degree in research for business administration
- Development of humanised mice
- Green ammonia and hydrogen for sustainability of Hydrogen South Africa (HySA)
- Incubation support towards commercialisation
- Cross-campus student seminars
- New People and Culture Human resources payroll system
- Staff costs optimisation
- NWU safety, health and environmental system
How quality enhancement fits in with our strategy
In addition to providing clear directives for managing and embedding quality in the university’s core functions, the NWU Strategy: Taking the NWU forward – 2024 and beyond – sets out how we should deal with major quality events such as the institutional audit by the Council on Higher Education (CHE).
The audit cycle is a series of engagements for the institutional audit from inception to completion. The main steps after initiating the audit are to prepare the self-evaluation report, conduct the site visit and compile the final audit report.
This report includes developing and reporting on an improvement plan and submitting a final close-out report to the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) and the NWU Council.
The site visit was conducted from 22 to 26 August 2022, and we received the final audit report on 28 November 2023, confirming that our quality management systems consistently meet or exceed established standards.
We received eight commendations and various recommendations for improvements. No aspect of our operations was reported as being below a given functional level or requiring significant improvement.
The commendations were about our Transformation Charter and Language Policy, community engagement, library facilities, the safeguarding of university information, student discipline, stakeholder involvement in programme development, the assessment review and alumni relations.
Future outlook
Having drafted our new strategy in 2023 and agreed on the way forward for the NWU, we will be entering the strategy implementation phase in 2024.
It will require focus, agility and pragmatism to implement this roadmap in earnest and ensure that our shared vision and mission are realised.
Fortunately, we will have our 2024 APP to guide us to harness our strengths, discover new frontiers and seize all opportunities to position ourselves in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape and – most importantly – benefit society.
Armed with our new strategy and APP, we will continue to strengthen and build the NWU while enhancing the university’s impact in our delivery and engagements.
Greatness without boundaries
High-tech online system enhances audiovisual equipment
Faulty audiovisual equipment can derail a lecture and interfere with teaching and learning time. As a solution, the university has taken its audiovisual systems online – a step towards the design and development of the NWU digital classroom, a strategic project.
The technology provides remote assistance in lecture rooms where audiovisual devices are used. It identifies what equipment is installed in each lecture room and whether it is functioning properly.
The online control technology also enables IT to determine which audiovisual devices academics use the most, and to produce real-time asset and status lists, which can assist IT with preventive maintenance in academic spaces.
