Well first week back at work after the two week break for festivities. I nearly wrote first week back in the office, but with hybrid working, I suspect for some, this first day still means working from home. Also in various parts of the country the snow and flooding would make commuting challenging Personally I headed to our Bristol office. We still have a choice of where we can work with hybrid contracts, but I read yesterday about how many companies are now forcing or requiring staff to come into the office.
This was covered in a Guardian article, ‘It didn’t come as a surprise’: UK workers on being forced back into the office.
Some welcome cuts to hybrid working but others feel less productive and are considering change of job or country.
Many employers are mandating the return to the office, in this other piece on the Guardian website.
The post-festive return to work in the dark days of January is never easy, but this new year is shaping up to be tougher than usual for UK workers. Not only must they brave days of severe cold and ice, but many face the end of post-pandemic hybrid working.
The article continues…
Such orders are provoking fresh battles between employees and their bosses, who believe staff need to be brought together to foster collaboration, creativity and a sense of belonging.
The challenge I find with that, is with a geographically distributed team, even when you are in the office you are spending a lot of time on online calls and meetings. The value in being physically in the office is lost.
I expanded on this on one of my other blogs.
Lots of snow this week, however, I didn’t see much mention of university closures compared to say fifteen years ago when we had some really bad snow. I wrote about this.
So this week we’ve had some snow, but I suspect the disruption is still there, but the response from the sector will be influenced by that covid experience, to the point where the disruption can be minimised.
Met with our new Head of Research this week.
Universities need new ways to make their research pay. An interesting opinion piece on the FT about York looking to diversify their research income by looking to industry to fill that gap.
Public and private funding are both vital for institutions such as the University of York as international student fees fall. But cracks have appeared in York’s financial foundations in the past couple of years. It suffered a £9mn deficit last financial year amid a fall in the number of higher-fee international students on whom it relies to support research and teaching of UK students. It shed 275 jobs, mainly among administrative staff, as part of an unpopular restructuring.
Attended our regular internal Consultancy Forum where the Collaboration for a sustainable future report was discussed and the opportunities therein for possible consultancy in this space.
Spent much of the week I felt filling in a survey for a workshop. The survey was about Jisc activity across various spaces and planned activity.
I finished and completed Lead at Jisc management and leadership course I have been doing since last April.
