Staff

Pillar of our strategy

We know that the needs of our students in relation to their mental wellbeing are not static, and change as life, society, and their personal context changes around them.  Staff training and personal development must evolve to meet these changing needs. We need to ensure that our staff can have effective and meaningful discussions with students about their mental and physical wellbeing. In addition, we need to provide spaces, interventions and support as it is needed.

Ensuring that all staff understand and are able to meet their responsibilities for student wellbeing in a non-judgemental way is important. Equally important is that staff understand the limits of their own responsibility and expertise and can therefore signpost and refer appropriately.

Staff - Pillar of our strategy

The University is committed to protecting the health, safety, and wellbeing of all in its community.

  • The Students and Education Handbook has been developed for staff and will be updated annually. It seeks to bring together helpful information in a central, accessible format to support colleagues responsible for teaching and those who regularly work with students. 

  • Student Support and Wellbeing Services have devised a 3 levels of support guide which can support and enable the facilitation of referring students for assessment and support.

  • Our Organisational Development Department have a clear and sustained commitment to staff development, and offer a range of education and training opportunities for staff across a range of platforms. Examples include Three Minutes to Save a Life, Talk to Me, Resilience and Mindfulness workshops as well as a range of management and leadership development programmes.

  • The University of Wolverhampton is, like other HEI’s, in a period of rapid, transformational change. We are all working hard to meet the evolving needs of our students, customers, colleagues and stakeholders. Our CARE framework (all about being collaborative, ambitious, respectful and effective) ensures that all staff know the behaviours the University values. Good for staff, good for our students and customers.

This framework aims to support staff development and career progression which ultimately can lead to reward and recognition for those who demonstrate high levels of competency. In addition, it supports our selection processes to ensure that we always recruit the best candidate.

  • The University of Wolverhampton has appointed a new company, OHWorks, to provide occupational health services to our staff. OHWorks is a specialist occupational health provider with considerable experience of delivering these services to universities. Occupational health is a distinct branch of preventative health care, which works to promote health in the workplace and forms part of the overall health, safety, and wellbeing agenda, focusing on the management of work-related health risks. 

  • Our human resources directorate support and maintain a Staff Wellbeing Hub. A range of services and resources are accessible and available to all staff. This includes a suite of self-help information and signposting to support:
  • Crisis support 
  • Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Wolverhampton has partnered with Remploy and the Department of Work and Pensions to offer a mental health support service to all staff, free of charge. The service is fully confidential and offers expert advice and support for nine months which includes:
  • Support to produce your own individual wellbeing plan in order to help you to stay in or return to work.
  • Information about workplace adjustments to help you fulfil your role.
  • Practical guidance about coping strategies which you feel might work for you.
  • Access to work - Mental health support service
  • Each staff member (including temporary staff and visiting lecturers) can access the staff Employee Assistance Programme, for themselves and their family members. The programme provides a free confidential telephone advice line which is aimed to enable staff to discuss any problem(s) they may have with someone who is trained to listen. Staff can access a free counselling service which consists of up to six sessions of counselling per issue, per year. The first session will be up to 1½ hours and any subsequent sessions will be about 50/60 minutes. 

 

 

  • We will take a whole-university approach to the planning and delivery of staff training relating to mental health and wellbeing, identifying priorities across our whole staff community, including developing the role of personal tutors and of postgraduate research supervisors.

  • We will support the review of the training need and strengthen ongoing professional development requirements for personal tutors and postgraduate research supervisors and offer a clear remit of the expectations of staff in these roles with respect to the provision of mental health support and guidance for students. These expectations to include their compassionate and safe boundaries will be 1clearly communicated to both staff and students.

  • We will build on the existing training for personal tutors to develop training for other academic staff

  • We will look to extend the provision of training and support on student wellbeing issues for staff outside of traditional pastoral roles such as estates and facilities, recognising their crucial contribution, often as front facing members of our community who students develop meaningful connections with.

  • We will regularly seek feedback from staff and students to inform our approach, one such example will be the findings from our “Reflections on culture” survey which has been designed and aims to explore principles that underpin our CARE framework.

 

The Action Framework for Disability Equality aims to ensure that all disabled staff and students are valued during their time at the University of Wolverhampton. It is underpinned by seven fundamental guiding principles that, once confirmed, will be reflected in University strategy, policies, practice, behaviour, action plans and culture. You can read the draft action plan here: Disability Equality Action Plan. To join the consultation and provide feedback on the plan, please email Megan Lawton (M.J.Lawton@wlv.ac.uk) or Sukhvinder Singh (Sukhvinder.Singh@wlv.ac.uk).

The action frame work is underpinned with some key aims to include that all staff recognise and value the vast experiences of our disabled and neurodivergent student population.

All staff are advocates for disability equality in order to ensure all our students reach their full potential.

We actively work to remove all institutional structures and barriers and are at the heart of developing solutions to the challenges our disabled and neurodivergent students and staff may encounter.

We recognise that disabled and neurodivergent students and staff are not a homogenous group. Our students and staff live with different disabilities and ways of thinking, having varying experiences and outcomes, and we consider that complexity when analysing data and developing actions.

We honour the intersection of disability or neurotype and other factors wherever possible. Our students 

staff have identities shaped by several different characteristics.

Our disabled people are well represented in both our staff and student committees, as this fosters a sense of belonging and relatability for our disabled and neurodivergent student population.