Dear colleagues,
With the new Semester well underway, and our students enjoying an in-person learning experience once again, I now want to clarify expectations going forward to ensure that our staff presence on campus is in place to deliver and support this.
During the summer, as part of our return to campus transition phase, we set the expectation that all staff should return to campus-based working a minimum of 2-3 days a week.
As we now move into the next phase of regularising the approach being taken across all Faculties and Professional Services, the Executive Team has agreed that all staff will be expected to work on campus for a minimum of three days per week (pro-rated for part-time staff) from Monday 31 October.
We recognise that, as previously, some roles will require staff to be on campus more often than that, and that some colleagues may need more time to transition to three days, for example those with caring responsibilities. Please speak to your line manager if this is the case.
As a campus-based institution, there are many benefits of working and meeting in person for the purposes of engagement, collaboration and innovation. Importantly, we remain fully committed to agile working and the advantages it brings to staff and the University. We will continue to offer flexibility to colleagues to help balance work and home life through our agile working toolkit, and we also intend to continue with Meeting-Free Fridays.
Alongside individual expectations, I have asked Departments and Schools to be consistent and clear with colleagues regarding the necessary service requirements for coverage across their teams in order to ensure that our students and external clients can access our services in person, online and by phone.
Our staff have been hugely resilient, adaptable and committed over these last few challenging years and I am confident these new arrangements will help us to achieve our strategic goals going forward whilst retaining the benefits of new ways of working we adopted under the challenges of the pandemic.
With more staff on campus, we also need colleagues to play their part in helping the University to achieve its sustainability goals. Our Strategic Plan, Vision 2025, commits us to year-on-year reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a reduction by 70% by 2025 and achieving net zero by 2040 or earlier. Since 2018/19 we have cut our emissions by around 30%, but we need to do more to achieve these ambitious targets.
When commuting to campus we would encourage you to consider active and sustainable travel options. You will find lots of helpful information about this on our Sustainable Strathclyde webpages, which includes details about staff discounts on public transport and bicycle hire.
As part of our annual Strathclyde Switch Off awareness-raising campaign, we are also asking staff to help us to save energy by ensuring that non-essential electrical equipment is turned off at the end of every day.
To assist with this, Sustainable Strathclyde is issuing instructional stickers, which you can put onto different electrical items in your department – with green stickers indicating it is okay to turn the device off, orange meaning that you should check with line or department managers before you turn it off, and red stipulating that you should never turn it off.
Stickers are available to collect from the Security Control office at Livingstone Tower and more information on the simple actions you can take to be energy efficient can be found on the Strathclyde Switch Off webpages.
The Switch Off campaign also targets students in our residences and, in November, Sustainable Strathclyde colleagues will provide feedback to both students and staff about the impact your participation and actions have made.
I would also strongly encourage you to sign up to our Carbon Literacy Training to help you understand the issues and the actions you can take, and by participating you will be helping the University work towards Bronze-level Carbon Literate Organisation accreditation.
Finally, tomorrow I will be presenting 94 colleagues with Long-Service Awards at a special ceremony in the Technology & Innovation Centre.
I very much look forward to presenting these awards to a group of individuals that, between them, have a combined 2,515 years of service – with 11 colleagues accumulating 40 years of service, and 83 celebrating 25 years at Strathclyde.
It is always an enormous privilege to host this annual event, which is a highlight of the year, as we recognise and celebrate the contributions of so many dedicated colleagues.
Our longest-serving Strathclyders carry with them fantastic experience and institutional knowledge, and play a key role in supporting those who have joined us more recently. Look out for more information and photographs from this wonderful event in next week’s Inside Strathclyde.
Have an enjoyable weekend when it comes.
Best wishes,
Jim