Strategic plan - People

Whether in our teaching, research or administration, all of us strive to embrace and implement our School’s core values - trust, transparency, accountability, inclusivity, and fairness - in order to facilitate and promote an atmosphere of teamwork, community and collegiality in which all have an equal opportunity to excel.

All colleagues make an important and distinctive contribution to the success of SoML. We are committed to creating a supportive and inclusive environment in which excellence in teaching, research and administration does not come at the cost of student and staff well-being. Our aim is to ensure that SoML offers a welcoming, safe and inclusive environment for all staff and students including those from the LGBTQ+ community and under-represented social groups. This applies not only to our curriculum and research agendas, but also to our estate and the two sites out of which we are likely to be operating for the duration of this strategic plan (both of which currently have restricted accessibility).

In accordance with our zero-tolerance policy in respect of bullying and similar unacceptable behaviours, we will continue to deploy the full range of the University’s disciplinary procedures where needed.

Our People Strategy is underpinned by seven key objectives

• Ensuring that our curriculum, in both scope and delivery, is genuinely inclusive with a view to increasing the proportion of under-represented social groups in our School’s UG and PG populations.
• Using equitable and transparent norms for teaching and administrative allocations to ensure that the different contractual circumstances of academic staff are recognised appropriately.
• Ensuring that all recruitment processes are carried out in an inclusive manner and attuned to unconscious bias.
• Ensuring a reasonable balance of gender, experience and contract-type on all our key advisory committees.
• Promoting leadership and career development among academic and PS staff at all levels and contract types.
• Minimising the use of bank worker contracts and fixed-term appointments.
• Improving staff/student well-being.

In order to achieve these objectives, we will:

• Engage in close consultation during the planning, design and construction phases of any new building work.
• Continue to monitor our Athena Swan Action Points following our recent submission in November 2020.
• Continue to schedule all key committee meetings in core hours (with appropriate PST support allocated).
• Monitor School committees to ensure a reasonable balance of gender, experience and contract-type, as well as the embedding of the student voice into our decision-making processes.
• Continue to advertise School roles openly so as to create opportunities for all colleagues to gain experience of service and leadership, thereby supporting career progression.
• Improve our induction procedures for new colleagues and make EDI training standard for all colleagues.
• Diversify the body of colleagues involved in AR&D reviews and develop a more structured and inclusive system of mentoring.
• Engage with the University’s recently announced review of workload norms and seek to develop a new workload allocation for SoML that better captures the full range of colleagues’ activities and offers a clear and transparent distribution across all three areas – research, teaching and administration – weighted according to contract type.
• Ensure that appropriate portfolio management responsibilities are shared between the PS team and academic role holders.
• Explore ways of offering the most suitable kinds of support (including flexible working where appropriate) to ensure smooth transitions into and out of periods of sickness/parental/carers leave.
• Wherever possible restrict the use of fixed-term EF contracts for the replacement of colleagues on secondments and/or research leave, thereby minimising the use of casualised ‘hourly-paid’ contracts.
• Engage with the University’s Mental Health strategy to promote positive health and well-being in the School.

Key performance indicators will include (a) Athena Swan Bronze award, (b) student and staff surveys, (c) external examiner reports; (d) URLT report, (e) successful promotions on the part of both E+R and EF colleagues, (f) a reduction in the spend of the casual teaching budget, and (g) reduction in days lost to sickness