How do things look? Have there been a lot of opinions and suggestions?

“Responses to the draft have been generally positive. There have been a few different comments on the wording and questions about the manager component, including whether a manager policy could be developed in the future. Several responses also raise the question of what happens if employees violate the policy. Otherwise, there are a lot of suggestions about linking the staff policy to other areas, like induction, staff development conversations, performance assessment in salary reviews, and so on.”

Do you see any trends in the responses?

“Not trends exactly, but many want clarification that the staff policy is more normative than legally binding.”

What happens now?

“The project team is meeting with the project’s reference group and steering group to go through the comments and the revised draft of the staff policy. In addition, we will of course inform employee organisations and maintain a dialogue with them.”

When can we expect the staff policy to be ready?

“The plan is for the staff policy to be approved by the Vice-Chancellor in January 2023, and then work will begin on implementation within the University”.

How will implementation of the policy take place? How will individual employees notice that the University has adopted its first staff policy?

“For the staff policy to be a living document, it must be used and discussed. This is everyone’s responsibility, but managers at different levels have an important role to play in communicating the policy and its content. Support for discussing the policy will be developed and the first support material with discussion questions and ‘dilemmas’ is being developed within the project.”