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Tag: HR

Fire Awareness Training

Published 9th September 2021

The Plug Dilemma
The Paradox Plug! Sure you can click on the image, but it don’t do nothin’

Fire safety awareness training time again. A useful refresher, but the content hasn’t changed, and any new learning was constructed from the training’s test unit which consisted of a mix of questions that were either patently obvious or about things that weren’t covered in the training. While that latter group could have been infuriating, I found it the most useful because they made me have to think and work out the correct answer logically. I passed, first time, 90%.

The other thing I “enjoy” about these mandatory online training courses is critiquing the quality of the content and platform. And how we would have done it better. Consider the image I’ve screen-shotted here: “Click image to make it safer”. Well, you can’t. The image isn’t interactive. In fact there is no interactivity in the training at all, despite being referenced like this in many slides; it was just a text-only presentation with next and previous buttons. 4/10.

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DSE Training and Assessment 2020

Published 6th November 2020

DSE Training Screenshot - Software can make you stressed!
Anyone who makes us use iTrent should be hung, drawn and quartered

After nine months of home working, the University has decided to mock me by making me do my display screen equipment training again. It even had a self-assessment section at the end which it made me complete on the basis of the equipment in the office I haven’t set foot in since March. As an act of rebellion I completed this training sprawled on the sofa with a laptop precariously balanced on my torso with a hot cup of tea to hand. This training stole 36 minutes of my life that could have been spent prepping for teaching next week, or playing Zelda.

I know, it’s serious and I shouldn’t be mocking it, but I’ve done this training so many times! And I’ll be honest, I did learn something new today – static electric shocks can be an indicator of low humidity. I got a question wrong for skimming over this in the training. I’m not sure I need to know this, but the factoid is now firmly embedded in my brain.

I guess I can look forward to my fire safety eLearning sometime soon now, and being thoroughly rebuked for not having multiple types of fire extinguisher in my apartment.

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Flexible Working

Published 2nd October 2020

Summary of flexible working optionsA summary of Sunderland’s flexible working schemes

Attending some HR training today on the University’s new Flex Select work scheme, but which also covered flexible working in general. Flex Select is a new scheme that has been launched to – and everyone’s being very honest about this – save money in these hard Covid times, and is set to run for the next 12 months. The scheme is designed to enable staff to request more flexible working, such as reducing their hours, without having to go through the old, more formal flexible working policy which was drafted with flexible working legislation in mind. Given the workload of myself and the team, I doubt there will be anyone who can work fewer hours! But in pre-Covid times I did have one of my team move onto compressed hours, 37 over 4, which had to be managed carefully within the team.

Nevertheless, it’s good to be up to speed with these things, and I got a lot from the session. It’s good that the University is trying to change its culture a little. Of course practically the whole university was forced into a remote working when the lockdown began in March, and now with some people going back on a hybrid model, managers are being asked to have a ‘default yes’ position to requests under Flex Select, and to consider all requests with an open mind, considering other options where appropriate. I did not know, for example, that buying extra annual leave is often a better option than reducing hours because it doesn’t affect your pension and no contract changes are required.

Apart from Flex Select, I learned a lot more about the differences between our other various options, including buying annual leave, job sharing, career breaks, and phased retirement (popular with academics). I also learned, to the surprise of no-one, that flexible working is vastly more popular with women and people on lower salary bands. (Grumble, destroy the patriarchy.)

It’ll be interesting to see how many of these changes are kept, and how much of a cultural shift will be permanent when we get on top of the pandemic; a very big question a lot of people will be asking.

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iTrent HR System

Published 12th February 2018

The university is in the process of rolling out a new HR system, iTrent, from Midland HR. This was my training, as a manager, on how to access and use the new system to manage leave and absences, access and update personal information, process expenses and claims forms, and run various reports.

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Managing Redeployment

Published 15th December 2016

Following the university’s restructure of support staff, a number of people are now in a redeployment position and all managers were asked to attend this HR training session on how to help those staff fit into their new roles. This was principally about the procedures to be followed and paperwork required during a six week trial period beginning in January, but also covered how to set reasonable objectives and on how best to provide feedback.

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Appraisee Online Training Module

Published 8th September 2016

appraisee_training

Freshly rolled out, our HR’s new online appraisee training module that I created for them in Storyline. We’re developing a good relationship with HR and more work of this kind is on the cards. Storyline is also picking up throughout the university, though Faculties are tending to purchase their own copies for one or two interested people to do the development themselves. The next big one I should be working on after we get through the new semester busy period is for HIV awareness.

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SLS Appraiser Training Workshop

Published 25th April 2016

HR and SLS, which uses a slightly modified approach, have recently revised the university’s appraisal scheme and documentation to try and make it more guided and to encourage reflection in the appraisee. This workshop was to discuss those changes and share best practice across the service.

Also covered in detail were your own responsibilities as a manager for ensuring that the process was a success, from logistics such as room booking and setting aside adequate time for both yourself and the people you are appraising, to how to guide the discussion by asking effective questions and how to identify suitable objectives for the coming year which map into departmental and service level objectives. The discussion we had around effective questioning was particularly useful, as it neatly ties in with the work I have been doing on the Leading from the Middle course, particularly the sessions on coaching.

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Managing Absence

Published 10th February 2016

Attended a briefing on the new HR / SLS procedure for managing short and long term sickness absence. The session covered the impact of absence to the university and the trends over the past few years, best practice for reporting and monitoring absence, the paperwork required by HR, triggers for referral to occupational health, new guidelines on phased return, misconduct (which is extremely rare), our responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act, and how to access internal and external services which are available to help people, such as counselling for stress and mental health issues. The purpose of the new procedure is to give line managers more direct responsibility and to try and remove the perception of HR as the ‘police’.

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Leading from the Middle

Published 13th November 2015

At my appraisal last year it was suggested that I attend the University’s second line manager’s development course. This was delayed by a year because the course was under redevelopment by HR in conjunction with our Business School’s Corporate and Professional Education (CaPE) team. The new course, now branded as ‘Leading from the Middle’, is a fully accredited post-graduate module resulting in a Postgraduate Certificate in Leadership and Change upon successful completion. I don’t have a lot of information at the moment but I suspect that assessment will involve a portfolio of evidence, and in any case I’ll want to blog about the course as it develops, so I have created a new page specifically to collect these posts together using the ‘LFTM’ tag. The taught sessions on the course are as follows:

  • Induction and Academic Skills
  • Knowing Yourself, To Lead Others
  • Strategic Leadership and Culture and Context (2 parts)
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Coaching at Work (3 parts)
  • Understanding Finance
  • Collaborative Conversations
  • Creativity and Entrepreneurial Learning
  • Leading Change and Transition
  • Leading High Performing Teams
  • Leading Equality and Diversity
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