Monthly Archives: November 2019

Management and leadership development celebration

Learning and Organisational Development held an event to celebrate management and leadership development across the University on Wednesday 13 November.

The celebration, in the Darwin Conference suites, was opened by our Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Karen Cox, who congratulated everyone present.

Certificates were presented to members of staff who, during the past year, have taken part in various leadership and management programmes, including the Insights programme, Foundations of Management, Leadership for Areas of Significant Responsibility (LASR) and the Aurora programme.

Group photos took place after the celebration, followed by cakes and plenty of networking.

You can find out more about leadership and management development programmes available at the University on our HR webpages.

Picture shows: Graduates of our Insights and Aurora programmes (from left) – Silvia Maria Rasca, Rowena Paget, Yvonne Sherwood, Sarah Slowe, Justine Rush and Chloé Gallien.

2019 Christmas payroll arrangements

Please note that the final date for receipt within the Payroll Office of timesheets, claims/extra payments and batch timesheets for upload is Friday 29 November 2019 in order to guarantee payment prior to Christmas.

Please be aware that claim forms will need to be submitted to schools/departments prior to this date, in order that they can be authorised in time to meet this deadline.

Hourly Paid Lecturers (HPLs) only: Although it remains the case that HPLs must be submitted to Payroll by 29 November 2019 in order to guarantee payment before Christmas, departments may, if they wish, allow HPLs to make an advance claim for the hours they are expected to work up until the normal cut-off date of 10 December.

Claims received after this date cannot be guaranteed payment before Christmas 2019.

New starters

For anyone starting work in December 2019 (this includes all salaried staff (inc direct hires and temp bank), hourly paid lecturers and timesheet paid staff), Human Resources will need to receive all their documentation by Friday 22 November 2019 in order to guarantee payment prior to Christmas.

Contract extensions/variations

Strategic Recruitment Review paperwork (for extensions/variations) needs to be received by Human Resources by Friday 15 November 2019

For all ll other out of scope DB501’s/RO/Flexible working and ERA requests etc, Human Resources OPS Team will need to receive all the documentation by Friday 22 November 2019 in order to guarantee correct payment prior to Christmas.

Any documentation received after these deadlines will be carried forward to the January 2020 payroll.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

National recognition for Estates Customer Services Centre

The work of our Estates Customer Services Centre has received national recognition.

The Centre, created in June 2018, has been awarded Customer Service Excellence accreditation on its first application.

The award comes just over a year since the Centre was created – in June 2018 – to raise awareness of the work of our Estates Department and act as a contact point for all enquiries.

The accreditation process included a day of pre-assessment in which Head of Customer Services & Engagement, Sarah Cooke and her four-strong team were measured across 57 different criteria.

The actual accreditation took place on 6 June 2019 and included an interview with Deputy Director of Estates Helen Ellis, customers across schools and departments and both internal and external partners.

Sarah Cooke said: ‘We’re really pleased we got the accreditation – and in some areas we were not just compliant but marked as “above and beyond”. We’re all really proud of the achievement – it’s recognition for how hard my team has worked and how good they are with the customers.’

The accreditation by M Assessment Services will last for three years and is monitored by a rolling programme of continuous improvement.

You can find out more about the work of Estates Customer Services Centre on the Estates webpages.

To contact the team, email estatescustomerservices@kent.ac.uk or telephone ext 16666/01227 816666.

Picture shows (from left): Angela Durling, Becky Medlock, Sarah Cooke, Helen Ellis, Emily Mashford and Beverley Braiden.

Organising for Success: recruitment update

We are currently going through a selection process to appoint our seven new divisional Directors of Operations. The Directors of Operations will join the leadership team of the University’s academic divisions; working with the relevant Director of Division and other members of the divisional leadership team. These are key appointments for the University – we therefore need make sure we do all we can to recruit and appoint the right candidates for the role.

For a number of reasons, we have been unable to make all seven appointments and will therefore be re-advertising for two of them. This will again be open to internal candidates only, so that we can make sure we have fully explored the potential for internal staff to take on the positions before we potentially widen our search externally.

The job advert is now open and available here, with a closing date of 23.59 Tuesday 19 November.

We encourage anyone interested in these roles to apply, and do please contact our Chief Operating Officer Denise Everitt for a confidential discussion if you want to discuss further.

Join our Medway photoshoot and receive a £10 Amazon voucher

Fancy taking part in the University’s photoshoot on Tuesday 12 November? It can be a lot of fun and for every student who takes part, we’ll be saying thank you with a £10 Amazon voucher.

You don’t even have to pose! Most of our photos merely require you to sit and chat to your fellow students in various locations around the campus. Sounds good?

We have three photography slots to choose from:

10.15am – 11.15am

11.30am – 12.30am

12.30pm – 1.30pm

To volunteer, simply email Karen (kad@kent.ac.uk) in the Publishing Office as soon as you can. State in your email which time slots you can manage. And if we book you for more than one slot, you’ll receive more than one voucher.

BAG week – save the date

Belong and Grow – it’s your BAG week, or #BAG week took place in May 2019. The aim of the week was to celebrate diversity, promote wellbeing and encourage learning for all staff and students. The week encompassed Learning at Work Week, EDI, Mental Health awareness, Deaf awareness week, IDAHOT and the staff networks. Every event was under the umbrella of one of the aims of the week. Our ethos was that there should be something for everyone – find your ‘BAG’. What’s one person’s bag, may not be another’s.

The week involved over 40 bookable events at Canterbury and Medway – a complete variety of events facilitated by Kent staff:

Wellbeing events, such as Mindfulness, Yoga, Tai Chi, a guided walk around the Labyrinth and Reflexology.
Digital training, such as Mind Mapping, MOOCS, and the digital future.
EDI/Protected Characteristics sessions, such as LGBT allies, Non-Binary, You don’t look your age, Unconscious Bias, Deaf awareness.
New skills and hobbies, such as writing, crochet, knitting, Park Run.
Drop in sessions about Apprenticeships, Careers, a #MeToo Harassment session and our Uni Kent Boob team ran CoppaFeel information sessions.

Kent Sport also put on special events, such as Japanese Swordsmanship, lifting and many more; making the overall total more than 50 events, all open to staff and students.

Over 400 people enjoyed events during BAG week 2019. Every event was about learning; whether a new skill, developing existing knowledge, participating in discussion, or just relaxing as part of learning how to look after your wellbeing at work.

AND we are doing it all again in May 2020, so save the date – w/c 18^th May 2020.

If you have an interest or speciality and would like to facilitate a BAG week session for us in 2020, please email LDev@kent.ac.uk

Management Undergraduate of the Year Award returns!

Are you looking for a future career in management? Do you have good customer service and communication skills?

The Management Undergraduate of the Year Award celebrates all of this!

You could be on your way to winning a summer placement with Enterprise in these simple steps:

1. Go to https://undergraduateoftheyear.com/management and register

2. Answer the question set by Enterprise. The Careers and Employability Service can read through this before you submit if you would like support – all you need to do is book a quick advice appointment on Target Connect.

3. Complete three online tests

If you get through these stages you will be invited to a telephone interview and assessment centre, which the Careers and Employability Service can support you with through our Quick Advice scheme.

The deadline for the awards is 31January 2020.

Good luck!

Between landscape and abstraction exhibition in Keynes College

Keynes College is delighted to house ‘Between Landscape and Abstraction’, a new exhibition of paintings by Angela Rumble and David Hayward which can be admired in the Atrium, as well as in the Keynes Gallery on the first floor of the College, until 15 December.

The work of these two artists may appear quite different in both style and technique but all the paintings in this exhibition are profoundly linked to elements of landscape – to organic growth, material substance and transient experience.

There are obvious structural differences between Angela Rumble’s web-like compositions and David Hayward’s layered approach but perhaps the main distinction lies in methodological direction – Rumble works from the real towards abstraction while Hayward begins with the abstract and then informs with the real.

Angela and David are no strangers to the College, as ‘Uncertain Places’, a very successful joint exhibition of their work, was held there in 2015, and it is a pleasure to have them back!

All paintings in this exhibition are for sale. Prices on request from the Keynes College Master’s Office – keynesmastersoffice@kent.ac.uk or direct from the artist.

Angela Rumble website, angela@hernhill.plus.com

David Hayward website,: dwhayward@btinternet.com

Kent Sport Physiotherapy Clinic now offers Reflexology!

Great news! We now offer Reflexology at Kent Sport Physiotherapy Clinic on a Monday evening!

What is Reflexology?

Reflexology is non-invasive, complementary therapy and is a thousand-year-old practice that focuses on massaging the acupressure points in the feet or hands to relieve stress, illness, pain and stimulate mental, emotional, physical healing and well-being in all the body systems. It builds stress resistance and rejuvenates by stimulating meridians, circulation and the nerve systems by flushing and detoxing.

How does Reflexology work?

Each area of the foot, hand, eye, face and ear connects via nerves and electromagnetic energy (chi) channels (“meridians”) to a particular body organ and system. By massaging that area, it stimulates and flushes that area.

The benefits of Reflexology?

Stress relief
Relaxation
Hormone balance
Depression
Anxiety
Insomnia
Balance immune system
Lower blood pressure
Support digestive system
Respiratory disorders (asthma)
Sinusitis
Menopause

For more information or to book in, please call us on 01227 824375 or contact physio@kent.ac.uk.

Tom Baldwin awarded Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship

Dr Tom Baldwin, Reader in French in the Department of Modern Languages, has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship to bring Professor Suzanne Guerlac, Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, to Kent during the autumn term 2020.

Professor Guerlac’s research focuses on articulations between nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature and visual culture, and on European literary theory and philosophy from the eighteenth century onwards. Her publications include the monographs The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautréamont and the Esthetics of the Sublime (Stanford University Press, 1990); Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, Breton (Stanford University Press, 1997); Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Cornell University Press, 2006); and a co-edited volume, Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009). She has also recently completed a monograph entitled Proust and the Time of Life: Photography, Money and Desire in ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Professor Guerlac’s visit will be hosted by the Centre for Modern European Literature (CMEL). She will work with academic staff and students affiliated with CMEL and with other research centres and Schools at the University to share the knowledge and expertise developed through her interdisciplinary research projects. Her visit will include lectures and research seminars at both Kent and other UK universities, as well as workshops in undergraduate and MA seminars related to her expertise.