Dear colleagues,
Our Autumn Graduation ceremonies get underway next week, when we will welcome more than 2,500 graduands to the Barony Hall to celebrate the culmination of their studies and the award of their degrees before their families, friends, supporters and our academic staff.
These joyful occasions are a highlight in the academic calendar and I look forward to presiding over the forthcoming ceremonies and to seeing many of you there to celebrate our students’ success.
To ensure that we are fully able to support events such as graduation ceremonies, the on-campus student learning experience, and service provision for our external partners, staff and clients, last week I clarified the Executive Team’s expectations around our staff presence on campus going forward.
For colleagues who were on leave last week, during the school holidays, I want to reiterate that the next phase of regularising the approach being taken across all Faculties and Professional Services, means 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 next Monday, 31 October.
We recognise that some colleagues will be required to be on campus more often than that, whilst some – such as those with caring responsibilities – may need more time to transition to three days. If this is the case for you, please speak to your line manager.
Ensuring we have a strong campus-based presence will also enable us to fully maximise the opportunities that working together and meeting in person can bring for engagement, collaboration and innovation.
Importantly, we remain fully committed to agile working and the advantages it brings to staff and the University, and we will continue to offer flexibility to colleagues to help balance work and home life through our agile working toolkit, and 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, staff and external clients can access our services in person, online and by phone.
I am proud of the resilience, adaptability and commitment colleagues have exhibited 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.
As part of our commitment to our staff, I would encourage you to take the time to respond to our latest Health and Wellbeing Pulse Survey which seeks to assess awareness and uptake of the training, initiatives and resources available to staff.
The survey is being undertaken by our new Workplace Health and Wellbeing Manger, Kevin Donovan, a role that was created in response to staff feedback in our previous Wellbeing Survey last year. Your answers will help us to develop this important part of our People Strategy.
With more staff on campus, we 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.
As part of our annual Strathclyde Switch Off awareness-raising campaign, we are 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 has provided instructional stickers, available to collect from the Security Control office at Livingstone Tower, which you can put onto different electrical items in your department – to indicate whether they can be switched off or not.
Sustainable Strathclyde colleagues will provide feedback to both students and staff in November 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, I am pleased to note that Strathclyde received a commendation in the Large Employer of the Year category at The Herald Top Employer Awards 2022 last night, and we were also shortlisted for the Judges' Award. This accolade reflects the many initiatives and measures we have put in place to provide an employee-friendly working environment.
Thank you for your efforts this week and enjoy the weekend when it comes.
Best wishes,
Jim