New organisation of KI’s Professional Services as of 2025 decided
On 1 January 2025, a new organisation of KI’s Professional Services (PS) will come into force. Six existing offices will cease to exist and three new ones will be established. At the same time, working methods for increased coordination of cross-cutting issues within the professional services will be developed.
There are two main processes that form the basis for the decision and the continued work on change:
- the needs inventory carried out by the university management in dialogue with the entire organisation, which resulted in KI's nine priority focus areas.
- taking forward recommendations from previous investigations such as the project Harmonised professional services 2019-2021.
“We need to go further with increased coordination and clearer contact channels within operational support. We know that many employees in both PS and core operations agree with this. With this decision, PS offices will have a clear and strong mandate to prepare for the needs of the future,” says KI’s University Director Veronika Sundström.
Since the summer, in-depth collaboration has been carried out and all employees within PS have had the opportunity to participate in analysing the proposal.
In addition to changing PS' offices, the analyses have focused on how work processes with cross-cutting issues such as cooperation with the health service, safety, communication, equal opportunities, the environment, and sustainability can be coordinated between different offices.
Most important is the development of processes and ways of working
The value we create at PS lies primarily in our processes and ways of working towards our core operations, not in how we are organised. But processes need clear ownership in order to develop. Now that the offices have a more coherent strategic and operational responsibility for their areas of expertise, we can better overview and develop our processes and working methods,” says Veronika Sundström.
The review of the PS organisation and working methods is the first sub-project within focus area F: Coordinated and optimised administration. Sub-project II, which deals with coordinated support functions at the departmental group level, will begin shortly
The decision
Six existing offices will cease to exist
- Research Support Office (RSO)
- Finance Office
- Faculty Office and International Relations (FIR)
- Legal Office
- Strategic Management Office
- Education Support Office
Three new offices will be created
The offices are formed with working names and each Head of Office is tasked with working together with their managers and employees on their internal organisation and working methods in 2025.
Office of Research Support and External Relations
Head of Office: Björn Kull
Office of Legal, Planning and Economic Affairs
Head of Office: Recruitment to start shortly. Acting Gunnar Gustafsson Wiss, Deputy Helén Törnqvist
Education Support Office
Head of Office: Åsa Nandorf, Deputy Johanna Gasslander och Jan Petersson
HR Office
- To be added the relevant staff from the unit Sustainable development and equal opportunities office within FIR
Head of Office: Johanna Bäckström
Communications and Public Relations Office
- Review of the office's mission is ongoing in 2024
Head of office: Peter Andréasson
Property and Facilities Office
- Establishment of a common Facility Management (FM) function
Head of office: Rikard Becker
IT Office
Head of Office: Mattias Nordström
Administrative support
(staff function)
Head of Administration: Tomas Högberg
KI's Chief Legal Officer will be attached to KI's management through the University Director. The staff function Administrative support headed by Tomas Högberg will be linked to the University Director.
The decision in full
Few changes at the managerial level
For two of the new offices, existing Heads of Office will be appointed with extended but not fundamentally new tasks. For one office, the Head of Office post will be new and will therefore be advertised shortly. Due to natural departures, no redundancies are foreseen. As FIR is discontinued, Marie-Louice Isacson will leave as Head of Office. However, she will continue to project manage the review of KI's operational support and will be part of the PS Administrative support function.
There will be no major changes at the managerial level for 2025 with this decision, as the existing units will be lifted into the new PS organisation, with a few exceptions. The internal organisation of each office will continue to be reviewed and developed over the next year in cooperation with the managers and staff concerned.
What happens next?
Current Heads of Office are now responsible for further feedback on the findings of the in-depth collaboration at office level and with affected functions.
In November, risk and impact assessments will be carried out with the support of HR together with the relevant Heads of Office, Safety Representatives, and their designated staff representatives.
In parallel with this, work is underway within the University Library (KIB) and Medical History and Heritage (MHK), where the President is expected to make a decision later this year on integrating MHK as an office within KIB.
The new organisation of PS will enter into force on 1 January 2025. Budget, information on the Staff Portal, and technical adjustments to administrative systems will be implemented by 1 April 2025.