Author: Ian Dunn, Chief Operating Officer
There were two parts to UEB today, an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Committee and a standard UEB; this blog is therefore slightly longer.
The ED&I Committee reviewed the University’s completed 2018 Equal Pay Review and action plan, which will be published shortly. The review, which examines the pay of specific groups of people performing equivalently-graded work, demonstrates at an institutional level that there are no significant equal pay gaps (using the Equality and Human Rights Commission definition of that term) by gender, ethnicity or disability within the University’s pay grades. As reported in March this year, there remains an overall gender pay gap at the University. The action plan resulting from our Equal Pay Review includes initiatives aimed at continuing the long-term trend of progressively closing our gender pay gap, whilst continuing to maintain our underlying equal pay position. You can read more about this on the University’s equal pay and gender pay gap reporting webpages.
A very full UEB followed. Under the Staff Engagement standing agenda item, the primary discussion was sharing best practice on how the UEB commitments are being put into action. The commitments were shared with Council on Wednesday last week, whose members wholeheartedly welcomed them. Going forward, each month a Dean or Professional Services Executive Director will update UEB on their actions in bringing the commitments to life.
A discussion on expectations around appraisals followed and, while recognising that a review is being undertaken, there was reaffirmation that every employee should have the opportunity for an annual appraisal and objective setting meeting with their line manager, and that agreed objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time- bound) wherever possible.
UEB then received the monthly update on Health Safety and Risk, showing few significant incidents in the last reporting period. Seven new health and safety policies were approved and will be available in the near future on the Health Safety and Risk intranet site. These all follow current legislation and compliance to them is required by law, so if you are involved with, or concerned about: compressed gases, legionella, asbestos, electro-magnetic fields, electrical safety or manual handling, please be proactive and read the policies once they are available. Finally, the Annual Assurance Statements were agreed for distribution and completion by September.
In the following section of the agenda UEB discussed the Confirmation and Clearing strategy for this coming month, which as in previous years, will led by the Vice-President (Education).
We had the opportunity to drill deeper into the National Student Survey (NSS) results and will in due course have access to the full range of comments. For those who may have missed the communication last week, we were delighted that the 1.16% improvement across the University led to a 24 place increase from 78th to 54th. Really good progress but clearly further to go. There was some discussion on the subject level Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and, recognising the ongoing uncertainty as to the ‘when or what’ will be implemented., It is nevertheless clear that if we continue to focus on NSS, continuation and employability improvements we will be in a good place.
UEB agreed that, from 1 August 2019, the University will expand its Visa Reimbursement Policy to include reimbursing Tier 1 and Tier 2 visa fees for existing employees renewing these visas, in addition to support already provided for new employees obtaining these visas for the first time. It was also agreed that support would be extended to include reimbursement of 50% of the Immigration Health Surcharge.
Finally, we received a paper on Doctoral student training. UEB endorsed the importance and rationale of a University-wide approach to Doctoral Training, the details of which still need to be ironed out.
UEB next week is very short due to graduation ceremonies and a blog post will not be published.