President's weekly update

31 March 2021

We have received the University-level results of our recent short staff pulse survey and you can read an overview of these on StaffNet. We had hoped for a higher response rate, but 47% of staff completed the survey. We are encouraged by many of the results. 73% of respondents strongly agreed/agreed that they felt supported by the University during lockdown which means that we outperformed the higher education institution (HEI) benchmark (42 UK HEIs) group by +12% and the Russell Group (RG) (15 RG universities) by +11% . 72% of respondents strongly agreed/agreed that the University does a good job of keeping them informed about matters affecting them, which is +12% above the HEI benchmark and +10% above the RG benchmark. 93% of respondents were aware of the University’s health and wellbeing support services.

Areas where we need to focus future activity include helping staff to feel valued and recognised for the work they do. Staff were positive about benefits of working from home during lockdown, but 23% felt they were less productive and only 46% agreed/strongly agreed that online meetings were more efficient than meeting in-person.  We will be carrying out further analysis of our results and will share this with you in the coming weeks.

We have just published our latest analysis of our gender pay gap which you can read about.

At a meeting with a small group of staff from across the University I asked what they are looking forward to. Aside from the obvious of a return to more normal activities, they wanted us to come back to ‘Our future’, our strategic vision and plan which was launched early in 2020, not long before the pandemic struck. We have been monitoring our plan, written what feels like so long ago and with very extensive consultation, it’s remarkable that much of it still remains appropriate for now. We are already moving faster on blended and flexible learning and some of the time-scales and measures of success may change, but the core elements, particularly ‘our values’, remain very much the same.      

We held a meeting of the Vice-Chancellors of the five universities and nine Principals of further education colleges in Greater Manchester to further discuss how we can work together to enhance education and skills across our region. The meeting was attended by a representative of Public First who we are working with on a Civic University agreement and senior staff from Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

In a meeting with Meric Gertler, the President of the University of Toronto and his colleagues, we considered the success to date of our partnership and how it can be taken to the next steps including developments in digital health, global classrooms and exchanges of staff and students and building our three-way partnership with the University of Melbourne. We also shared experiences on other global partnerships and noted the remarkable similarities in the challenges we both face.

The Russell Group held a meeting with Professor Paul Monks, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. A key topic of conversation was the current cuts to research funded by the Overseas Development budget and major concerns about the future UKRI budget. We are expecting an announcement imminently.

My role as co-chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology ends today after I have served on the Council for ten years, spanning three prime ministers, three chief scientific advisors and many more science ministers.

Innovation Greater Manchester was formally launched this week. We have been closely involved in its development which aims to increase innovation in the region to deliver jobs and prosperity. An important part of this will be our own Innovation District Manchester, previously known as the UMIST site. We aim to announce our selected commercial partner in a few months.

Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, and I held a meeting with over 200 staff in IT Services. This was mainly to thank them for their amazing work. We all rely on IT, but never more so than over the past year as almost everything we do from teaching and assessment to meetings and discussions has been online. We agreed that while we all very much hope that we will be able to do more in-person very soon, we have learnt a great deal from the past year and must retain some of the things that have worked really well.

I’m sending this message a day early because we have declared Thursday as extra holiday along with next Tuesday around the Easter bank holidays. I appreciate that some of our staff will still have to work over the holiday period, and I know some who feel that they have a backlog of work that they have to catch up on, but I hope that you can all have some well-deserved time of relaxation. It feels like a very long time since the Christmas holiday and I know that our staff have worked extremely hard. My next message will be on 15 April.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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