© 2023 EPFL / Adrien Buttier
Simplify is an initiative of the President’s Office aimed at promoting a culture of simplification within EPFL and reducing administrative complexity so that professors, laboratory staff, and employees can focus fully on their core responsibilities.
A collaborative approach
Simplify is based on a strong conviction: the best improvement ideas emerge from the daily experience of those who make the School function.
An initial phase made it possible to identify simplification ideas within the central services. Some actions have already been launched. In parallel, numerous exchanges took place at different levels of EPFL to better understand the challenges encountered and to take the pulse of needs.
320 responses, 12 key themes
In a second phase, an internal survey was launched to better identify the difficulties encountered in the day-to-day management of laboratory activities, as well as to gather ideas, proposals, and suggestions aimed at simplifying their daily work.
In total, 320 people responded to the survey and provided approximately 1,400 inputs (problems, observations, suggestions). These inputs were analysed using internal LLM tools (thereby ensuring data protection), which made it possible to identify 12 main themes.
36 concrete simplification actions
On this basis, a consolidation effort was carried out within each Vice Presidency to propose a set of actions that have already been initiated or could be undertaken by each VP and/or between VPs over the short term.
A mapping of these actions against the themes emerging from the Simplify survey shows that they will, in a first step, provide concrete responses to several real concerns in the daily life of laboratories. Of course, this is only a beginning and this effort will need to continue.
Keeping close to real needs
Referents have been appointed within each Vice Presidency to coordinate the various actions. Where appropriate and depending on the projects, “tandem groups”, including volunteers identified in the survey, will be formed to validate the “user experience” and remain close to the concerns of the laboratories.
Towards a culture of simplification
In the longer term, the vision is to bring about a gradual cultural shift, with a collective effort toward simplification at all levels of our School. This will involve simplifying and clarifying certain processes, and even eliminating them where the need is demonstrated or they have become obsolete.
The full details of these simplification actions and their current status are available online (access restricted to the EPFL community).
Contact
For any questions or suggestions: [email protected], President General Staff
Referents
AVP-E: Isabelle Cahour
VPI: Natacha Putallaz
VPH: Mathieu Helbling
VPS: Christian Fauteux
VPO: Antoinette Musard
VPF: Yves Allegri