Dear Colleague,

Every one of us has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic and we are now working in very different ways in response.

I am writing to ask you to tell us as much as you can about your working situation by Tuesday 4th August so we can plan for the best outcome for the next semester.

There is an enormous amount of activity underway to prepare for the coming semester. The work to design how we undertake all our activities and ensure that people can get to and from campus, while maintaining social distancing and applying other control measures, is significant.

Additionally, many of us have a variety of caring responsibilities as well as health and wellbeing factors that need to be considered.

If the plans we are putting in place are to be successful, then understanding all of these is vital.

We know that we are going to have to work more flexibly than ever before. Some of us will need to be based entirely on campus, others working largely remotely, and a third group a combination of the two.

The information from this survey will be used in the following ways:

  1. To help us model the flow of people to and from campus and what this means for parking, buses, and the occupancy of our buildings
  2. To help us understand the challenges faced by academic colleagues in light of personal circumstances and the teaching blocks that are core to the Bath Blend
  3. To help us understand the challenges faced by other staff whose personal circumstances might have an impact on how we can do our jobs
  4. To help us create a budget for the personal IT and other equipment required by colleagues who will be working remotely much of the time
  5. To start the conversations between individuals and their line managers/Heads of Department about getting the equipment needed, and, wherever possible, creating the flexibility required to balance our collective commitment to student experience and research, with our personal commitments and circumstances.

You should understand the following before you take part:

  1. This is not anonymous. To work through personal circumstances and for equipment to be ordered, we need to know who you are.
  2. We are not asking you to disclose details of personal circumstances, but simply to indicate where they exist. Your responses will be shared with your line manager/Head of Department and aggregated in anonymised data for operational planning purposes, apart from car parking permits where a name is required.
  3. Your line manager will be asked separately to assess the likely working type of your role (campus, flexible, remote) taking account of your job and personal circumstances.
  4. By indicating a certain answer under this exercise, neither you nor the University are making binding commitments. All our circumstances are liable to change, and not all wishes can be accommodated.

This is not a compulsory exercise. However, the more of us who take part, the better our ability will be to make informed decisions for the coming academic year.

Please follow the link to start. See the attachment for additional guidance.

Keith Zimmerman Chief Operating Officer