This week’s winning Friday Feeling picture comes from Wendy Kay, this is a memory from Mappleton Beach, Hornsea clearly not taken in lockdown because its not raining! Head over to lock down loves for basically loads of pictures of everyone getting their hair cut on independence day last weekend!

Staff wellbeing and engagement

For those of you who have seen Simon’s update we are putting a big emphasis on staff engagement and well being. With the announcement that we will not be able to return to the office until the winter Deborah and Simon would really like to do all they can to ensure that we are prioritising your health and wellbeing.

With that in mind we have some things that we would like to share with you:

• Outdoor team meetings and Catch up’s – From this week Managers are being actively encouraged to take your team meetings outdoors! You may have seen that Simon has invited you for a catch up at Endcliffe Park next week, we think that this would be a really good way for you to see some of your team mates and catch up in a safe and socially distanced manner. The Research Team recently took their team meeting outside which Carl has reported was a success and boosted the morale of the team.
  • • • • We appreciate that this of course might not be suitable for everyone for a number of reasons so it is not a compulsory activity.
• Coffee mornings / Drop in’s  – Next week we will be beginning with a series of coffee mornings with staff to open up the communication channels once again between the Finance and Procurement Leadership Team and staff. These discussions as with previous coffee mornings will be led by members of the team. You are again encouraged to attend the coffee mornings / drop in’s even if you don’t have anything to say, sometimes its just good have a listen to what is going on, we will then have management in some of the sessions to be able to answer your questing give responses to previous issues raised.
• Team Briefings – You would have seen by now that we have a team briefing in the diary for a week on Wednesday (22nd July) thank you to everyone who has accepted, the timing isn’t great we know with year end so it is appreciated that you are making the time to come along despite other pressures.
• Staff Engagement Survey and Action Plan – As we now have a view into the future and we know what the next few months is going to look like it is time to re-survey everyone to get a feeling for how everyone is getting on. We will then use to put together an action plan which we can use to make some real and positive changes as we done have in the past.

How to set a strong work life balance

For those of you who use Trello you may have received an email this week entitled ‘How To Set Strong Work-Life Boundaries As A Remote Worker’.

In the email there is a link to a page which has some really useful hits and tips for creating a good balance at home as a remote worker, such as setting yourself a morning routine, setting boundaries, decluttering your work area, and breaking larger tasks down into smaller chunks in order to help with focus. If you have 10 minutes I would suggest anyone go and have a read of it.

Access to buildings / campus – new updates

In this week’s email from the university there were some new guidelines for if we are re entering campus and working safely it is important that if you are planning on going back onto campus that you read the attached document.

The university is has made face coverings and temperature checks mandatory should you be entering campus.

In response to requests from colleagues, a further opportunity to allow limited access to the campus to collect important items will be offered in July. It request access fill in this form.

Internal communications toolkit

The internal communications team has written a tool kit should you need a little help with preparing communications, filming at home or creating a slide deck you can find it here

The first online all staff briefing

HROD glossary of terms

Ever been part of a conversation and thought I have no idea what that person is on about when they’re using quick abbreviations and terms… HROD have come up with a handy glossary of university terms.