Family Friendly Initiatives

A subgroup of the Partnership Group investigated the possibility of introducing a number of Family Friendly Initiativess into the University and a survey of staff was conducted to ascertain the level of interest.

1. Flexitime- do core hours whilst running a credit/deficit bank of hours as agreed.
   In relation to flexitime, a small majority of staff were in favour of it’s introduction. The Group believed that the majority was so marginal that a formal flexitime arrangement could be divisive, because of the recording of hours, and decided that should individual staff wish to work flexitime they could pursue it at departmental level.
   
   
2. Annualised Hours - allows a person who does regular overtime to get their normal income for their basic hours. They are also contracted to do reserve hours which can be used by management if necessary. The worker gets a steady monthly cheque which doesn’t vary from busy to slack times of the year. The idea is that the reserve hours should not usually have to be worked and a joint committee may be set up to help management schedule work for completion in normal time.
   
   The staff survey showed that no real interest was expressed in the area of annual hours, and during the discussion it emerged that some areas had opposed the concept, fearing that it might reduce earnings. It was agreed that there was little point in pursuing this generally, but that individual areas might be able to develop the idea.
   
   
3. Gradual retirement - for people who do not want to work full time anymore it may be possible to agree a mixture of work and retirement income e.g. 90% work plus 10% early retirement.
   The majority of staff surveyed were interested in gradual retirement and the group, with the assistance of Jack Hutchinson, is pursuing the matter.
   
   
4. Term-time work - essentially this is unpaid summer leave.
   In relation to term-time work, only limited interest had been expressed through the staff survey. The Group felt that it would be more appropriate to deal with requests for term-time work within the context of the Policies and Procedures on Job-Sharing and Part-time work.
   
   

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