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President's weekly update

1 July 2021

We held our celebration of philanthropy event online to thank some of our most generous donors from across the world. We heard from three of our amazing younger staff about their research: Dr Charis Enns, Dr Claire Hoolohan, and Dr Lizzie Mann who all gave brilliant talks about how our research is addressing real world problems such as climate change, global development and COVID.

I joined members of the Athena SWAN Network from across the University as part of my commitment to talk to all of our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) networks. We agreed that good progress has been made on gender diversity, but there is much more to do to close the gap between men and women in senior positions and career progression. We discussed the differential impact of COVID on those with caring and home-schooling responsibilities, which is likely to impact for a significant time to come as staff try to catch up, particularly on their research. We agreed that there is no magic formula to account for these impacts which have fallen on many staff, but recognition must be on a case-by-case basis. We also heard that representation and routes for considering EDI issues are varied across the University and that while programmes such as Athena SWAN have been very valuable, we must not fall into a ‘box-ticking’ exercise to meet diversity targets.

At a meeting with staff from across the University, they spoke of their pride in the University, the value of our scale and interdisciplinarity, the importance of social responsibility and our civic engagement with our city region. Several described us as a warm, open and supportive organisation where challenge is welcome. Some had joined not long before the pandemic and were also from mainland Europe so had faced challenges post-Brexit. Staff also raised the difficulties of communication across such a large organisation and asked how staff can input more into decision-making (I said there was a greater need for a ‘top down’ approach since COVID through necessity and urgency). They spoke of the stresses of balancing research and teaching, wanting to have more autonomy for local decisions, concerns about a single point of contact on HR issues, and the desire for more investment but recognising our financial challenges.

I chaired several informal Russell Group meetings to discuss the USS pension, ongoing and likely future impacts of COVID, and funding of universities, and we met with two senior staff from government. The latter meetings focussed on how our universities can help with ‘building back better’ after COVID, the ‘levelling up’ agenda, our contribution to innovation and commercialisation and wider involvement in skills and training.

At an ‘away day’ for the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership, we met in person for the first time for well over a year. We identified future priorities for the region, recognising varied impacts of COVID on the citizens of our region including delivering on ‘net zero’, addressing inequalities, infrastructure, employment and the living wage, equality and diversity and driving economic growth.

Linda Merrick, Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, and I met Lisa O’Loughlin, who chairs the group of the nine further education (FE) colleges in Greater Manchester (GM).  FE colleges are under huge pressure and have very limited funding, so we are keen to help across GM. We discussed how we can better understand the challenges and routes for transition of students between FE and universities, mapping skills training to employment needs and mutual support for skills and training.

We interviewed candidates for the role of Director of People and Organisational Development, to succeed Karen Heaton when she retires later this year. I am pleased to announce that Adèle MacKinlay has accepted the position and will start with us on 1 October.

Our Board Remuneration Committee met to consider succession planning for all senior roles, as it does each year. We also discussed ongoing pay and USS pension negotiations. On pay, we are part of national negotiations, through the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) which has put forward a national pay increase of 1.5%. This is higher than the average inflation (CIPH) over the past year (~1%) but lower than the most recent inflation (2.1% last month).  Pay is of course a vital part of the rewards and recognition for our staff. Currently we spend just over 57% of our income on staff pay. In addition to the national pay award, 54% of our staff receive an annual increase in pay of about 3% due to increments until they reach the top of the pay scale.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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