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The Facilitation Impact Awards (FIA) honours organisations that have used facilitation to achieve a measurable and positive impact as well as the facilitator(s) who worked with them. More about FIA
Silver award
Universidad Politécnica Salesiana
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Client: 
Facilitators: 

Strengthening our image and identity – “We are the Salesian”

Impact

All employees at the of the Guayaquil headquarters of Universidad Politécnica Salesianais participated in the project—managers, administrative staff and teaching staff.

Promoting the alignment with the "Great Purpose", the sense of belonging and institutional pride through different meeting spaces and as a team, they:

  • identified the attributes that in practice support the motto #SomoslaSalesiana
  • developed agreements on how to live the values
  • generated understanding, commitment and loyalty, with the process of strengthening of image and institutional identity.

The actions taken achieved great results:

  • the number of parents and children who selected the Universidad as their first option increased by 20%
  • the effective enrolment rate increased from 71% in 2018 to 90% in 2019.

Context and challenges

The Universidad Politécnica Salesianais is a higher education institution of Christian inspiration with catholic character and salesian nature. It seeks to form honest citizens and good Christians, with human and academic excellence and investigative and innovative capacity, that contributes to local and national sustainable development.

Guayaquil headquarters, where this project was developed, has had a sustained and considerable growth in student population and infrastructure. The Universidad has modern facilities equipped with the latest technology and more than 9,000 students.

Within the three venues that make up the Universidad, the Guayaquil headquarters led by its Vice Chancellor had experienced considerable growth and he wanted to initiate a process of internal strengthening with collaborators in an active and committed way.

The key challenges were:

  • to strengthen the image and identity of the Guayaquil headquarters in the eyes of its stakeholders
  • to be first in the decision process of parents and young people when choosing where to pursue their higher education.

The Universidad Politécnica Salesianais engaged D&E Asesoría to help the Continuous Improvement Committee, Career Managers, Technical Directorates and Faculty develop joint actions to:

  • strengthen institutional identity and culture
  • develop strategic agreements to facilitate internal coordination, improve response times and positively impact the increase in student recruitment
  • retain students.

Project objectives

According to studies the main attributes needed to compete and continue to position the Universidad as an institution that trains human beings to collaborate and actively participate in the improvement of society, were to:

  • generate alignment and commitment to the process of strengthening the image and institutional identity with the entire Guayaquil headquarters team: Career Managers, Technical Directions, Administrative Staff and Teachers
  • from an emotional perspective, promote the personal empowerment and build agreement of what it means to live the "WE ARE THE SALESIAN" and that this is reflected in the daily life of the institution.

Approach

The project was designed to be executed in several phases, with the participation of internal and external actors and with actions aligned to a comprehensive plan that was executed in one year.

Facilitation was used in all phases of the process, from the working sessions for the design, definition of agreements, deliverables, alignment of actions and roles with the Continuous Improvement Committee. As well as in the organization and development of strategic workshops together with the proposal of appropriate methodologies to build a "pooling" with Career Managers, Technical Directions, Administrative Staff and Teaching Staff, focused on "generating engagement and strengthening Salesian Identity".