My UCL Experience staff survey action plan underway

Since announcing the My UCL Experience staff survey results in May, an institutional level action plan has been developed to address key areas for action across UCL following your valuable feedback. We are pleased to announce that our first action will focus on supporting the wellbeing of our disabled community.

In parallel, working closely with representatives from Faculties, Offices and Divisions through the new Staff Survey Planning Oversight Committee, nearly 30 targeted action plans have been developed to address the issues you raised at a local level across UCL.

The survey results highlighted other recurring themes which require action. You told us that we need to invest more in systems and processes (only 34% were satisfied with UCL’s tools), and that people could benefit from being set more meaningful goals (46% satisfied). We are focusing on improving these areas via the Enablers theme of the UCL Strategic Plan 2022-27.

Supporting our disabled community

The survey results highlighted a significant difference in the wellbeing scores of our disabled community. The average emotional wellbeing score of all disabled staff (45%) is 22% below the UCL benchmark of 67%.

We know that the impact of the pandemic has taken its toll on the wellbeing of our disabled colleagues in particular. We are also hearing that we need a clearer policy on neurodiversity and the acceptance of neurodivergent staff and students, as well as a drive towards inclusivity making all job roles and courses accessible to those with disabilities.

To address this, we will be working collaboratively with our disabled community and networks to improve the wellbeing (as measured by the annual staff survey). We hope that by taking this action we will improve staff’s experience by at least 8 percentage points. This action will be put in place from the start of Term 1 (2022/23), with impact measured in the next annual all-staff survey, and incremental improvement also expected in regular pulse surveys.

We have identified a number of areas for improvement, including:

• Guidance and training for managers to support a better understanding of disability and what they need to do to ensure disabled colleagues are not disadvantaged.
• Commitment to requiring all documents and tools used in UCL committees to meet UCL’s accessibility requirements.
• Commitment to engage with UCL’s disability network (Enable@UCL), UCL’s Neurodivergent Staff Network and UCL Workplace Health to identify and prioritise needs to continue to improve the wellbeing of disabled staff.
• Commitment to achieving better disabled staff representation on UCL committees
• Increase availability of accessible mental health support for disabled staff
• Provide anti-bias training to all staff regarding disability

Professor Stella Bruzzi (Co-Chair of the Disability Equality Implementation Group and Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities) in partnership with Dr Jennifer Rode (Co-Chair Disability Equality Implementation Group), have been appointed as the sponsors to support and guide the action plan. UCL’s Disability Equality Implementation Group will provide additional leadership and governance around the approach.

Local action planning

The all-staff survey has highlighted differences across UCL’s Faculties, Offices and Divisions about your needs and which areas may require attention. Working with representatives from the Staff Survey Planning Oversight Committee, we are focused on planning and committing to actions that improve your experiences locally. Progress on this work is well underway with 29 of the 31 local action planning groups having submitted and already working on their local actions to be delivered in Term 1 (2022/23).

To measure the impact of these actions throughout the year, we will be relaunching the pulse checker survey specifically to track KPIs used in the institutional and local action plans, as well as to provide a deeper clarity around some of the metrics.

Get involved

Your views are immensely valuable in helping us understand how you feel about working at UCL right now and in identifying ways we can improve the staff experience for all.

If you have a disability, identify as neurodivergent or are interested in promoting disability equality at UCL, we encourage you to join our staff networks: Enable@UCL and the UCL Neurodivergent Staff Network (the Neurodivergent Staff network is only open to those with a neurodivergent condition). We welcome you to join in the conversation around our strategic plan for the next five years too. Our next Town Hall on 15 Sep, 11am-12.30pm in the Darwin Lecture Theatre as well as online via Zoom, will be looking at UCL’s size and shape.

Links

• My UCL Experience all-staff survey