Do you miss the office camaraderie? With many of us now working from home, you may be feeling a bit lost without your colleagues near, or the chitter-chatter around you. But have no fear! With the use of Microsoft Teams, Skype or other virtual devices, there’s plenty of ways for you to stay connected. 

As well as conference calls, here’s a few suggestions on what you and your colleagues can do to stay virtually connected: 

Get set up

Making sure your PC or laptop is ready for home working is crucial for keeping in touch. Our amazing colleagues in Information Services have provided this great guide to working from home, to show you how. It also includes crucial information from other professional service colleagues on data security, redirecting you phone and looking after your health and wellbeing.

Weekly virtual coffee 

Schedule a time every week for you and your team to catch–up over coffee via a video conference. This can be different from your regular meetings – you can put the kettle on and chat about other things than your work, as you would normally in the office. This works for virtual lunch too!  

Share photos and videos 

A good way to bond with your colleagues is sharing (appropriate) photos or videos with them. Whether that’s your garden, your pets or even your work station, it’s a great way to create that personal touch you may have lost by working from home. Set aside a time in the day or week where you can share these photos and connect with other.

Please use #UniKentHomeWorking and share your home set up with us. Be careful with privacy though – please don’t include clues in the photos as to your location or the names of your family members. You wouldn’t want to have bank details lying around either!

Read all about staying protected, while working remotely. 

Morning status updates  

Start getting into a routine of having virtual updates with your team. A daily or weekly morning update via video conference is a great way to communicate important information and to share what work has or needs to be done. It’s also a good practice for setting people up for the day.   

Team activities 

Activities can be as simple as attending a webinar or starting a book or cooking club together. For a good sense of wellbeing, why not participate in weekly meditation or yoga as a group? It’s a great way to stay connected, without it always being about work.    

Tell us what you think 

How are you keeping in touch with your colleagues? Share your thoughts and ideas on how to stay connected with colleagues by sending them to stories@kent.ac.uk.  

Calling all student, staff and alumni musicians at the University of Kent!

In the current situation, we are all having to find new ways to keep collaborative arts projects, such as rehearsing and performing music, alive – hence the Virtual Music Project!

Our first project is to put together a virtual performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria – and we want YOU to be involved! From wherever you are, we want you to record your instrumental or vocal part and send it, and we will build a virtual recording of everyone taking part.

You can find the choral scores to the piece via this document 

And the instrumental parts – violins, viola, cello, double bass, oboe, trumpet – via this document.

The Deputy Director of (virtual) Music, Dan Harding, will be making a recording of the harpsichord part and sending it out for people to listen to and play or sing along as they make their own audio recording. You will then be asked to upload your recording to a private folder, from which the final version will then be layered together.

So, what are you waiting for ?! Download your part now, start learning and practicing, and when the keyboard recording is available, rehearse with it, make and upload your recording, and we’ll put the finished version together. And if you can send a selfie of your making the recording too, from your living-room, kitchen, student flat, study, garden, wherever you are in the world, even better.

And don’t worry if your instrument isn’t involved in this first project: there’ll be more to come, including jazz and chamber repertoire, to get everyone making music.

Hope you are all looking after yourselves and each other at the moment, and taking the opportunity to keep practicing – the University of Kent Virtual Music Project is an opportunity to keep making music with each other, and will be with you wherever you may be!

Mental Health is a serious subject. Nearly two-thirds of people say that they have experienced mental ill-health and evidence suggests that poor mental health is responsible for almost 13% of all sickness absence days in the UK.

One of the biggest challenges with poor mental health is removing the stigma that surrounds it. Many don’t hesitate to seek help for physical pain or problem, yet so many of us ignore emotional and mental health issues – or we feel too embarrassed, confused or scared to talk about them.

To ensure continued support for all of our staff, L&OD have arranged the following Mental Health Awareness sessions and Resilience, Emotional Intelligence and Wellbeing training sessions.

Resilience, Emotional Intelligence and Wellbeing

27 April 10.30 – 12.30 Canterbury Campus
3 June 10.30 – 12.30 Medway Campus

Mental Health training for Line Managers

24 March 9.30 – 12:30 and 13.30 – 16.30 (2 sessions)
16 June 9.30 – 12.30 and 13.30 – 16.30 (2 sessions)

During Belong and Grow Week

Mental Health training for Line Managers

19 May 9.30 -12.30

Mental Health General Awareness

19 May 13.30 -16.30

All sessions are available for booking via staff connect

Outlines

Mental Health

• This Mental Health Awareness Training discusses mental health the way you would a headache or the flu, and it encourages you to take care of yourself and those around you.
• These courses raise awareness, they explains how to approach mental health and remove stigma; and provides simple tools, tips and ideas for day-to-day wellbeing-management (for yourself and others).

The Resilience, Emotional Intelligence and Wellbeing session aims to strengthen personal resilience and build emotional intelligence

• Have an understanding and awareness of resilience and emotional intelligence
  Recognise and respond appropriately to workplace demands and pressures
• Explore ideas to overcome negative thinking and maintain a positive mind-set
  Build an individual positive projection of resilience and wellbeing in the workplace

The University is committed to protecting the privacy rights of those whose data it processes.

Whether we are processing the personal data of our students, staff, research participants or anyone else who has entrusted us with their personal data, we do so responsibly and in compliance with the law.

If we fail to meet those obligations, we lose the trust of those whose data we process. We also risk reputational damage, enforcement action and potential financial penalty.

To support staff in maintaining high standards around data protection, the Information Compliance Office has launched three new policies:

1.  Data Protection Policy 
2.  Data Breach Policy 
3.  Data Rights Policy 

They can also be viewed here under the Legal Requirements and Governance section .

By following these policies and completing their mandatory training, staff will be better able to ensure the University complies with its legal obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018 and other associated legislation.

We would like to invite you to a buffet lunch as part of Kent’s International Visiting Academics Network (IVAN).

When:

Wednesday 11 March from 12.30 – 13.30

Where:

Gulbenkian Café

The network has been established to give you the opportunity to build on your existing connections at and beyond the University.

To book your place, visit the Eventbrite website.

Please email internationalevents@kent.ac.uk if you have any specific dietary requirements.

We look forward to seeing you there!

International Partnerships

We would like to make you aware of a vacancy that we are currently advertising on the University website within the Financial Reporting team.

This is an exciting role that will provide training as part of an Apprenticeship programme in accordance with the Professional Accounting Technician Standard. The successful applicant will work toward obtaining their full AAT qualification at the end of the Apprenticeship with the support of a mentor in the team.

The role is a full time post at Grade 4 on the apprenticeship scale.

Further details about the job can be found on the career webpages

Is your work digitally inclusive? Every one of us produces digital content in some form and now is the time to make sure it is accessible to everyone.

All our digital content should ‘perceivable, operable, understandable and robust’ in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA accessibility standard.

Why is this important?

Not only is this a great way to make Kent a more accessible place to work and study, but there is a legal deadline too. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations (2018) requires the University to make sure digital content is accessible to everyone by September 2020. So now is the time to start taking action!

What we are doing already:

• Site Editor – the new web template, is designed to be highly accessible. Digital guidelines are being shared with schools and departments to help prepare content for these webpages.

• A plugin in Moodle called Blackboard Ally is used by the majority of academic schools and professional service departments to make content more accessible. If you would like access to, Blackboard please contact opera@kent.ac.uk.

• Accessibility statements for the kent.ac.uk domain as well as Moodle.

Ensuring that all our work compliments the Kent Inclusive Practices (KIPs) that the University has already endorsed.

What you can do:

• Keep your digital content simple and efficient

• Make sure text is accessible to other applications

• Structure text with style sheets/semantic tags

• Ensure text can be personalised and reflows when magnified

• Always add short image descriptions, or alt-tags

• Use descriptive words in links

Check your content with the inbuilt Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Office 365

Find out more…

For more information, see the University’s digital guidelines. You can also find out more about how the University is rolling out the regulations on the digital accessibility e-learning package in Moodle.

Make a date in your diary for Thursday 11 and Friday 12 June 2020 for the Kent Digital Conference on Canterbury campus. For more event details and to book your free place, visit the Eventbrite website.

We want to make sure everyone is ready by September 2020 so look out for further content over the next few months! Any questions, please contact opera@kent.ac.uk 

The Accessibility Team (OPERA)