Relationships between faculty and admin staff - help!

[MsDrumknott]

Name change for this one, as I don't want it linked to my other posts, which are more personal.

I work in a large well-known university department (c. 70 FT faculty and 15 administrators). Relations are generally pretty good, but we've just hired a new Departmental manager, and he's asked us to think of ways to improve relationships between faculty and administrative staff.

Has anyone tried any initiatives/ways of working/whatever that has had a positive impact on faculty/admin relationships? What has worked for you? Equally important, what bright ideas failed, and why?

I thought this was going to be sexual, lol!!

Social events? (Esp non alcoholic ones)

Get support staff more involved in faculty business and vice versa.

Gosh, that sounds like management down my way. Such a nebulous ambition. If it were me, I’d say to have clear lines of communication, so you know which admin people work with which team, that sort of thing. Socials and the like are generally a disaster, mainly as people are too busy, but involving people from same area (groups of courses, say) in projects on away days so that decisions are debated jointly can be beneficial.

Nb you might want to post this in Academics’ Corner, where you’ll find people working at universities-www.mumsnet.com/Talk/academics_corner.

I might be wrong but this sounds like one of those questions: "What can the support personnel do to improve the working lives of their colleagues?" - pretty standard in management and also when a new departmental head takes up post.