Three Members of Kent Sport ‘walked the walk’ by supporting Home Nations Sport at the highest level, in three very different ways.  As Simon Le Bon wailed his last and the final firework whizzed over Birmingham’s Alexander stadium Kent’s finest went to work.

Mel Clewlow: Director of Sport, Kent Sport

In case you are not familiar, our double Olympian Director of Sport, Mel Clewlow will be celebrating her 30^th playing year for Canterbury Ladies this year. She is still a first choice for their first XI and has represented England Hockey at three Commonwealth games with podium finishes in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 games.

Her love of the game extends from play to pitch side where she has been commentating since 2010 with notable commentary at the London & Rio Olympics plus multiple world cups and world competitions.  This year Mel will commentated on the World Feed, providing commentary to all nations.  Mel confidently predicted a top four finish for the England teams, with the women’s hockey team beating Australia to take gold and the men’s hockey team beating South Africa for bronze.

Vicky Annis: Physiotherapist, Kent Sport

Vicky supports the Kent Sports Clinic which combines the expertise of Kent Sport physiotherapy and the School of Sport and Exercise clinics creating one of the most extensive performance, physiotherapy, and rehabilitation services in Kent. No stranger to service in sport Vicky has previously supported the GB Triathlon Team in Cape Town and has worked at several World Series races. A keen swimmer, Vicky spent last summer swimming the English Channel solo, in an impressive 12 hours.

This summer she was selected to work at the Games as part of the Commonwealth Collective (a group of over 13,000 volunteers). Vicky provided physiotherapy from the Birmingham athlete village and the Team England HQ at the NEC.

Vicky said before the Games took place “I will be working with some of the best physiotherapists in England, this is an amazing learning opportunity”

Find out more about how the Kent Sport Clinic can help you .

Vicky’s Channel Swim

Jacquie Edwards: PA to the Director of Sport

Behind every good woman…is a good woman. Jacquie has worked for three consecutive Directors of Sport. She is an ex professional athlete with multiple international caps for England and Great Britain rugby.  Her trophy cache includes a prized gold winner’s medal after scoring the winning try in the 92 Women’s world cup.  Since retirement from Jacquie has been able to pursue her second love, music.

Jacquie travelled to Bisham Abbey (the national centre of excellence for the country’s leading sportsmen and women) to teach the England Hockey Men’s Team how to sing England’s national anthem, Jerusalem. Jacquie said “Those poor lads didn’t know I was coming and didn’t know what hit them! They were a bit reticent at first but by the end of the session they were all singing with gusto, pride, and passion” “Those are my lads now and I will definitely have a little tear in my eye when they sing the anthem”

Jacquie performs as Ginger Bennett and you can see her in her award winning show Songs from My Soul as part of this year’s Canterbury Festival

England Men’s Hockey Sing Jerusalem – watch on Instagram.

Songs From My Soul Preview.

Sunday 7 August was our last day hosting this year’s Lambeth Conference so I wanted to write to thank all of you for your patience and support throughout. We don’t host conferences of this scale and international profile very often and I appreciate the knock-on effect this will have had on many, from smaller things like the Gulbenkian being closed to the impact on some of your workspaces. I also want to thank all of those involved over the last fortnight – I know lots of colleagues have been in daily contact with the conference organisers, including across the weekends, to make sure we fulfilled our duties as hosts. The feedback from the organisers and delegates has been uniformly positive throughout the last two weeks so well done to all on a superb operation.

Our commitment to equality, inclusion and mutual respect

I am also very aware that many will have found our hosting of the Lambeth Conference difficult on a personal level. As Georgina updated ahead of the Conference, we are clear that the official Anglican stance on the place of LGBTQ+ people both within the Church and wider society does not fit with our own values as a University. This is especially true of our deeply held commitment to equality, inclusion and mutual respect. I’m sure that many will have seen the coverage of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s restatement of the Church’s 1998 position on Equal Marriage and we are unambiguous that we are in fundamental disagreement on this issue.

While we had no say over the content of the Conference, what we always aimed to do as hosts was to support positive voices seeking to move the debate forward within the Church. This included providing support where we could for those promoting positive change on LGBTQ+ equality and extending our welcome directly to the same-sex spouses of LGBT bishops in attendance. Our University is welcoming and inclusive to all and we were in regular contact with the same-sex spouses throughout to ensure that they felt as welcome on our campus as any guest to our University has a right to expect.

Progression within the Anglican Church

Meeting them and hearing their stories was moving and humbling, both the pain they felt at their exclusion from the Conference programme but also their determination to be present, visible and proud and, through their presence, to help bring about the change that they and we very much want to see. It made me reflect that progress can be difficult, uncomfortable and too slow for our liking but that it happens through small acts of personal courage, resilience and determination just as much as through the bigger public and media debates and discussions that we also saw during the conference.

The Lambeth Conference has been hosted at Kent since the 1970s and we are aware the Church has evolved its thinking in a number of areas over that time. However, the pace of progress, in a world that is rapidly changing and increasingly challenged, appears frustratingly slow and, while it is clear from liberal voices within the Church that many felt significant steps forward had been made in the past fortnight, we hope that the Church’s thinking and actions in this area will now evolve more rapidly.

Evolving our EDI Strategy

Lastly, I wanted to touch on both the Lambeth Walk and Rainbows in Religion symposium organised by the University’s LGBTQ+ Staff Network, which saw different voices coming together to discuss the intersection of faith and sexuality and to celebrate our diversity. I know how challenging the last two weeks have been for our LGBTQ+ colleagues in particular and I know too how important it was for everyone to have the opportunity to show their support for our community. I hope the Network events were a help with this and I know that the large and positive show of support for LGBTQ+ people on campus was also hugely appreciated by many Conference delegates.

Events like Lambeth bring together different voices from diverse backgrounds. That said, it’s very important we learn what we can from this experience, particularly around the impact on our community. Coming out of this, I know we have work to do to listen and evolve our EDI strategy in particular and to build on vital work underway in that area. Kent is a special community which all of us are part of and I am determined that we celebrate and champion the breadth of its diversity in all that we do.

With all good wishes for the rest of the summer,

Karen

HR GO, one of the UK’s leading recruitment companies, and the University of Kent have been successful in a joint application for a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. 

The award for £93,177 will provide half the cost of a two-year research project exploring how technology can better match roles with clients, including improving the feedback job seekers receive. HR GO will match fund the grant, resulting in a total project budget of £186,350.  

KTPs aim to help businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills within the UK knowledge base.  

John Parkinson, Chief Information Officer, HR GO, said: “We are delighted to have been successful in our application to UKRI for a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with the University of Kent. 

“This project will develop innovative AI models and systems to deliver feedback, scoring and matching of candidates at scale. At present, we receive over 500,000 applications for work each year for roles across all sectors, and across the whole of the UK.

“These AI models will power a semi-automated communications process to deliver enhanced feedback to candidates whilst helping HR GO’s clients ensure they find the best possible candidates to meet their needs.” 

The project team is now in the process of hiring an associate, who will be delivering the project over the two years. In addition to being tasked with analysing millions of points of HR GO data, they will consider all aspects of machine learning and AI development, from ethics to avoiding bias.  

Dr Anna Jordanous, senior lecturer at the University of Kent’s School of Computing and co-lead of the project said: “This is a fascinating opportunity to work with complex real-life data. There are multiple interesting technical challenges to tackle, and it is exciting to see how research knowledge can be applied to make a real difference to recruitment candidates and clients.” 

HR GO has previously worked with Dr Jordanous to review potential machine learning solutions which could be deployed to automate contractor candidate role matching, as well as having sponsored the Kent HR Network and offered placements for students through the University of Kent’s Employability Points Scheme. 

The University of Kent’s Year 10 ‘Breaking Barriers’ Summer School was involved in the TASO research project to evaluate the impact of virtual summer schools. As TASO publish the interim findings, it provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what we learnt from taking part in this research project and lessons for the sector.

Developing our outreach curriculum

This research project gave us the opportunity to speak to a group of students that we considered to be highly impacted by the pandemic. A number of findings from the Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) made us think about how we can adjust our outreach curriculum to accommodate these students (and their influencers), and consider whether they are unique or enduring circumstances.

Despite only being in Year 10 and therefore a few years away from having to make decisions around HE, the students were clear that access to mental health support would be an important factor to them when deciding on university. Perhaps this is due to poor mental health being exacerbated by the pandemic and it’s something that we had already started to consider in activities designed for younger audiences. These findings helped to re-enforce that it was the right direction to go in.

Many of our talks designed for parents focus around student finance and funding, but the parents and guardians that we spoke to worried about their young person’s grades being a barrier to them accessing and succeeding at university. This may be due to the interrupted education their young person has experienced and something worth exploring in our curriculum design for this audience.

One of the key motivators for students taking part in the summer school was just for ‘something to do’; a way to spend their summer –

“Because it’s the Summer and I feel like if I hadn’t have done this, I would’ve wasted my time and not done anything else. So, this feels really productive”

That was something that as an institution we hadn’t considered (or perhaps wanted to consider!) before but we don’t yet know if it’s specific to this cohort – after having 2 years of interrupted study perhaps they’re motivated to do something productive. That’s something that will be interesting to explore this year and going forward.

We would have offered a virtual summer school in 2021 irrespective of our involvement in the TASO research project but it is reassuring that students agreed they had met each of the aims that we had set for the activity and that it did have a positive impact on them. We’ve now been able to adapt this content for in-person delivery this year.

Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in outreach evaluation

One of our motivations for taking part in this research was because we were interested in the RCT process as a means of being able to demonstrate causality, but reluctant to do it ourselves. Having the support of TASO and the other partners was a real positive influence on our decision to apply. Although the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) performed the randomisation and selection of participants, the prospect of running an RCT as an evaluator is less daunting than it was before. There are few other outreach programmes in our curriculum that are suitable for this method of evaluation but we will definitely be exploring more Type 3 methods going forward.

The project also allowed us to have additional communication with the control group. Where previously our last communication with unsuccessful applicants was to tell them that they hadn’t got a place, this gave us an opportunity to get in touch with them again and let them know that we wanted to hear from them, and that we valued their thoughts and their opinions. We were able to leave it on a positive note, and we were pleasantly surprised with the response rate.

We look forward to the final research findings once we know whether these students applied to and enrolled in Higher Education or not and can see any differences between the control and treatment groups and any impact that may summer schools had.

Amy Burt, Monitoring & Evaluation Officer, University of Kent

Research and Innovation Services are looking for University of Kent academics to speak at this year’s Kent Human Resources Conference which will take place on our Canterbury campus on Wednesday 23 November.

Now in its eighth year, the conference will provide an opportunity for HR professionals and those responsible for HR in their roles to come together with University of Kent academics and guest speakers to learn, network and spark ideas. Throughout this one-day event, delegates will gain an insight into the latest research, examples of best practice and tips and tools which could be applied in the workplace.

We would like to feature voices from academics from across the university and are looking for proposals on topics relating to HR, or research and approaches which could be applied to overcome common HR challenges. These include but are not limited to:

·       Recruitment and retention

·       Changes in employment law

·       Workplace wellbeing

·       Diversity and inclusion

·       Flexible working practices

·       Training and Development

·       Leadership and management

·       Productivity and performance

·       Reward and Recognition

We actively encourage submissions from our academic colleagues at all stages of their career – from individuals who have never presented or run a session at a conference or event before, to more experienced voices from our community. Please submit your proposal using this form by Friday 9 September.

The Kent HR Network, sponsored by specialist HR platform provider, Ciphr, is an initiative focused on facilitating knowledge exchange between the academic community at the University of Kent and HR professionals, both locally and nationally.

If you have any questions about the conference, please get in touch with Chris McCarthy at c.mccarthy@kent.ac.uk.

We will be announcing further details about the conference over the coming weeks. To be the first to receive future updates on the conference, including ticket availability and our speaker line-up, sign up to our HR Network newsletter.

Around 170 people joined the event organised by Kent’s LGBTQ+ Staff Network as a show of support for LGBTQ+ staff and students ahead of the Lambeth Conference. 

The march around campus was planned to show the world that people of all gender identities and sexualities are welcome and part of the Kent community. A number of Conference delegates – including gay Bishops with their spouses – joined in along the route, which culminated in a mass dance-off in the University’s central plaza. 

Following the joyful and celebratory rally, the Network also hosted the Rainbows in Religion Symposium in Marlowe to explore further the intersection of sexuality and religion. Speakers including UoW Trinity St David lecturer Dr Angus M Slater and former UK Government LGBT Advisory Panel member Jayne Ozanne reflected on their own experiences pushing for equal marriage within the Church, before a panel discussion featuring staff and students at the University. 

The Lambeth Conference has been hosted at the University since the 1970s, with senior figures from across the worldwide Anglican Communion convening for prayer, reflection, fellowship and dialogue. While we are clear that the Church’s views on equal marriage in particular do not fit with our values as a University, our aim throughout the conference is to facilitate debate and discussion where we can in the interest of positive progress. 

Find out more on what to expect during the Conference 

Find out more about Kent’s LGBTQ+ Staff Network 

The end of the University year is always a chance to reflect on where we are, with the last 12 months once again shining a light on the ways we work together as a community at Kent. While it has been a real pleasure to see more of you face to face as we have re-integrated into campus life, I know that the amount of change we are all having to get used to has added pressure in certain areas and we still have work to do to ensure the wellbeing of all our staff is fully supported. This will be a priority in our new People and Culture Strategy which I look forward to sharing with you all next term. 

Staff Resilience Fund 

While some of the more immediate difficulties presented by Covid have now reduced, we are also now facing a cost of living crisis driven by high energy costs and inflation. This has an impact on our University finances but I am also very aware it will be very worrying for many of you and your families as day-to-day budgets are squeezed by rising prices.  

In the immediate term, Executive Group has agreed to make a one-off payment of £398.06 (pro rata) to all staff who were impacted by the 2020/21 Pay Freeze. This will come out of the Staff Resilience Fund which was established when staff pulled together to help us weather the financial impact of Covid – while budgets remain tight, the impact of rising costs mean we wanted to bring this initial payment forward to do what we can now. Around 75% of our current staff would have been impacted by the pay freeze, with the one-off payment applying to all salaried staff who have been with us since August 2020 and were covered by the agreement – payments will be made directly via the July pay run and, in accordance with the rules of the Fund, will be paid pro rata to hours worked. 

We have also agreed to suspend planned parking charge increases for next year and are looking into what more we can do to support both staff and students, including a possible hardship fund. Both of these immediate measures to help with the cost of living followed helpful input from JSNCC and we will continue to discuss what more we can do – please send any further suggestions either directly to me or via your Staff or Trade Union representative so that we can consider them in full.  

2022/23 Pay Increases 

On 1 August, along with other member universities, we will be implementing the final offer put forward by UCEA on behalf of universities across the sector in the 2022/23 national pay negotiations. The negotiations with trade unions have so far failed to reach agreement and there is understandable concern about how to renumerate staff fairly in an environment where costs are rising so steeply, but the same squeeze felt by households also has an impact on the cost of running the University. 

While I know this won’t feel like enough, increasing salaries by at least 3% for all staff and up to 9% for those in lower grades is felt to be the most that the sector can afford at this time. I am pleased that we can make sure this increase will reach staff pay over the summer and it’s also especially important that the increases are weighted towards those on lower salaries who may be most impacted by the wider pressures we face. It is also important to remember that, as usual, around 50% of colleagues will receive a further 3% increase through moving up an increment on the pay scale in October. 

Wellbeing and Support 

The last few years have felt like a period of constant change, from the top of Government down to our day-to-day working lives. I know this can be very difficult to manage – the way staff have adapted to new ways of working and the frustrations they can bring has, though, shown the best of our community. The way colleagues support each other, and our students, shone through in particular at both our Staff Recognition Awards and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Awards earlier this year.  

I know there is more to do to build a positive working environment at Kent for everybody, with wellbeing and workload pressures being key priorities for us to address next year. I would also encourage all of you to continue to seek support where you need it, from colleagues, your line manager or your local HR team – and remember our Employee Assistance Programme is available for confidential support and advice whenever you need it. 

Martin Atkinson | Director of HR and Organisational Development

Looking ahead to next year’s budget has meant reconciling two different, seemingly contradictory, positions. Our financial position has undoubtedly improved and we are on a much surer footing, including having the means to do more this year to invest in areas like employability, student facilities and enhanced equipment through successful capital funding bids, while also doing what we can to support staff with the cost of living pressures being faced. Meanwhile our underlying performance shows we still face challenges to balance the books, not helped by a number of external factors adding additional pressure on both ourselves and wider society. Income growth remains a key priority for us, while the reality of rising costs means we need to think carefully about where and what we are spending on and ensure a positive return from any investment made. 

Despite this, it’s important we reflect on how much we have achieved together over the past 30 months during which we ran the Financial Improvement Plan. I know this has been far from easy, but we have delivered huge savings in both pay and non-pay activity which has put us in a much healthier position, while also giving us enough leeway to survive the rigours of Covid and even make some investment in key areas. 

However, our ability to move faster and further is ultimately tied to how much we get in financially compared to how much we have to pay out. Despite the huge progress in recent years, this remains a tricky balance and we are having to weather significant external pressures that have only grown over that time – from rising energy bills and inflation to shifting student priorities leading to a national decline in student applications in some academic areas. Keeping a close eye on how we balance the equation is going to remain critical in the years ahead and we will all need to see this as a normal part of how we work as a University, ensuring we are agile and adaptive to opportunities and threats in an increasingly uncertain world. 

With that in mind, our budgets for next year will require Divisions and Directorates to work their budgets harder and look for further ways to run operations more efficiently and economically, building on the collective efforts already delivered over the past two years. This isn’t just about good financial management, but will involve looking carefully at our processes and activities and determining where these can be simplified or improved – in some cases, we may even decide to stop doing things we’ve done previously. We need to ensure our academic delivery, research and innovation performance and professional support models are resilient and sustainable in the face of change and that we have the flex we need to deliver our wider objectives and take advantage of new opportunities. Part of this will be building on our fantastic REF results to ensure our Research & Innovation income catches up with the best of our peers, including investment in areas with funding potential – we will also need to continue work on how we deliver and support the reshaping of our academic portfolio, and enhance the experience our students have, including the opportunities they are provided with in their journeys through to employment.  

Getting the right balance between being ambitious in our pursuit of a superb student experience while ensuring we are cost-efficient is never easy, but making the right adjustments where we can, to achieve it, will help all of us stay on track in the face of the wider pressures we face. Our immediate priorities are to attract, recruit and retain a sufficient number of students, ensure their time with us is as good as it can be through vibrant campuses and an ambitious, supportive teaching and learning environment, and deliver a high quality and growing research and innovation agenda. To achieve this, we need to have a stable and sustainable financial platform and I look forward to working with all of you to ensure we deliver this over the coming year. 

Jane Higham | Chief Financial Officer 

The University’s data protection, data breach and data subject rights policies have been updated to reflect current data protection requirements and safeguards.

Please read the policies so that you are confident that you are using data lawfully in your role.

These policies help you do the right thing when you are:

• using personal data
• responding to requests for personal data
• reporting a data breach or data security incident
• contracting with other organisations who use personal data on the University’s behalf
• handling particularly sensitive data such as allegations or reports of criminal activities.

The policies can be found on the Policies and Procedures page.  You can also contact the Assurance and Data Protection team for further support and guidance by emailing dataprotection@kent.ac.uk