Observations from the member survey: more visibility for advocacy work

During the spring, we have collected feedback from HYY’s members with our member survey, at events and in meetings, for instance. In this blog series, HYY’s Chief Financial and Service Officer Anna Laurila reviews the feedback we received.

HYY’s member survey was open throughout February, and we received around 300 responses to it. We also got another 140 written responses in our feedback box at HYY’s pop-up events on campuses. Thank you to everyone who has given us feedback on HYY’s activities!

Based on the feedback, many seem to feel that they do not know enough or cannot find information on what HYY actually does in concrete terms. These kinds of thoughts are especially common when it comes to decision-making and advocacy work. I agree on this! In fact, one of our communication goals for this year is to draw more attention to what we are aiming for as a student union and what we have achieved. The classic saying of advocacy work being a marathon, not a sprint, applies to us too. However, this does not stop us from communicating on where we stand at the halfway point.

Based on the feedback, both the Board’s and the Representative Council’s decision-making processes seem unclear. Whether the issue is voting or following decision-making processes, our members want more transparency. Hear, hear!

Representative Council meetings are livestreamed on Youtube, and the stream is only cut off for addressing confidential material or for reasons related to meeting technique. As following a five-hour stream might not be the most accessible option, our aim this year is to increase HYY’s own content where council members can describe matters addressed in the meetings in their own words. We hope that this will make the Representative Council’s operation and decision-making processes easier to understand.

The lists of decisions from the Representative Council’s and Board’s meetings are published on HYY’s noticeboard. In terms of the meetings, you can also submit an information request on the matters discussed in them. We are happy to explain decision-making processes to anyone who asks! These measures are obviously just a drop in the sea, but I hope that systematically developing our activities based on feedback will result in increased transparency.

As for advocacy work and influencing, many open comments express the wish for HYY to return to its ‘core activities’, that is, as close to the everyday life of students at the University of Helsinki as possible. According to these comments, HYY should influence academic affairs, students’ subsistence and student health care. However, we recognise that our diverse members may consider different things to constitute core activities depending on their situation in life and personal needs.

The feedback also includes the wish that HYY would influence matters by participating in working groups at the University, writing statements and taking part in public debate. You can read HYY’s statements and comments on HYY’s website. We will also try to increase content that explains our advocacy work activities in more detail in our communication.

What action has HYY taken based on the feedback we have received?

1. We will strengthen our communication on advocacy work on ‘core activities’ in particular: education, subsistence and matters that closely influence student life. You can check out matters that are relevant to students through our reels, for instance!
2. We will improve transparency in decision-making bodies and the operation of the Representative Council in particular. Representative Council members will get more opportunities to state their views in HYY’s communication channels. In the autumn’s Representative Council elections, we will once again show up on campuses to make it easier to ask us questions and understand the views of different Representative Council groups.

These are obviously not the only things we are working on, but we are committed to developing our operations towards the direction our members want us to, both now and in the future.

And just to be clear: you have not missed the only moment when members can submit feedback to HYY. You can send feedback to HYY’s Board and personnel directly throughout the year. You can also submit feedback using the feedback form on HYY’s website. We will also conduct member surveys in the future. Finally, you can influence HYY’s operation by running as a candidate in the Representative Council elections – or at least by voting in them.

We still have some way to go to reach our target level on our members’ experience of meaningful membership.  However, your feedback helps us assess whether we are on the right path.

Anna Laurila
Chief financial and service officer