A Fairer future for all - our pledges to you
The Fairer future for all pledges to colleagues are explained in more detail.
We will reduce short-term contracts and boost job security
Job insecurity is a problem across academia. We can do things better at the University of Leeds, so we pledge to reduce our reliance on fixed-funded and short-term contracts and ensure consistency in the use of contracts across the University. We commit to undertake a review of how we plan, finance and organise our people resources.
Having the right number of jobs, covering the right type of activities and being organised in the right way is important. Currently, the way that funding works for our sector often leads to our budgets being time based, and this in turn drives the approach we take to employment contracts. So, we are looking at how we can adapt our approach to enable the University to be more confident in offering on-going contracts. We will achieve this through senior University leadership and close collaboration with the three campus trade unions. Work has started to collate accurate data to form a clear understanding of what currently exists and to fully scope out the programme of work.
We will support a healthy and fulfilled staff community
The pandemic has pushed us to work incredibly hard and in a different way. It has also led to societal, individual and work-related changes. Therefore, our health and wellbeing needs to be supported like never before and remain at the heart of everything we do.
We already have strong internal networks to provide health and wellbeing support to you including staff counselling and psychological support and guidance on homeworking and life balance. We will increase awareness of, and access to all University and community resources. We are also considering our future ways of working and reviewing how workload impacts on health and wellbeing. We will do this in partnership with you so you can perform at your best.
We will create opportunity and celebrate achievements
You are our greatest asset and we want you to be the best you can be. Your achievements and behaviours must be appropriately recognised and celebrated.
Currently we provide a range of development services to support your professional learning and development. We commit to strengthening this even further to actively support learning and career progression opportunities.
We will review and update our promotions processes and criteria and strengthen the performance review and feedback process. Based on the new University values and behaviours, we will review our key people processes and activities, such as recruitment, promotions and recognition to ensure that they reflect, encourage and celebrate positive demonstration of our values and behaviours.
We want Leeds to be as diverse and inclusive as possible. We will continue with the measures we have and build on these to widen the diversity of our employee population. The appointment of our Deans for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion was a key step and together with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team, they will determine and drive our strategy around how we make this happen.
We are engaging with the staff networks as well as seeking feedback from and listening to you, our existing employees. We are already reviewing our approach to recruitment and considering how and where we advertise roles and engage with potential applicants. Also simplifying the application process to ensure that it supports people from all backgrounds to be able to apply for roles.