{"id":733,"date":"2023-04-06T09:52:22","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T08:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/?p=733"},"modified":"2023-05-17T09:52:34","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T08:52:34","slug":"arts-and-humanities-voluntary-severance-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/2023\/04\/06\/arts-and-humanities-voluntary-severance-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts and Humanities voluntary severance scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 3pm on 5 April 2023, members in the Arts & Humanities received a communication from HR, addressed to them personally, inviting them to consider applying for the now-reopened Voluntary Severance scheme. We have understandably received a number of anxious members from colleagues that they feel individually targeted or pressured to apply for Voluntary Severance.<\/p>\n

We would like to reiterate:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You are not being targeted personally or individually<\/strong>. This named message went out to all academic members of the Arts and Humanities and is not personal to you.<\/li>\n
  2. The message from HR is not<\/u> an official notification that your role is at risk of redundancy<\/strong>. If, over the coming months, you receive a personalised communication that looks like an official notification that your post is at risk of redundancy, please contact Kester Richardson-Dawes (krichardson-dawes@UCU.ORG.UK<\/a>) as at this point caseworker support becomes essential.<\/li>\n
  3. You should not feel pressured by this communication into applying for Voluntary Severance<\/strong> if you do not actually wish to leave your role. The email from HR was an announcement that the Voluntary Severance scheme has re-opened; it is not a material change in our position and does not change existing agreements that we have which rule out compulsory redundancies (CRs).<\/li>\n
  4. If you are invited to a meeting with your line manager or anyone else to discuss either Voluntary Severance or Redeployment, contact us to arrange for a UCU rep to be in attendance.<\/strong> Do not verbally express an interest in Voluntary Severance or Redeployment, if you do not wish to pursue these routes. A standard safe response to this is \u201cI will go away and think about these options and get back to you, I am not expressing an interest now\u201d.<\/li>\n
  5. Your strength and commitment to action in defence of your work means that UCU have secured a commitment from senior management that there will be no CRs.<\/strong> This is because we together, as UCU, have shown through our local ballot results that we are prepared to take action in defence of teaching, research and scholarship at Kent.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We have concerns about the approach taken to communicating with colleagues in this case, and questions about the proposed \u201ccost savings\u201d identified in individual subject-areas in yesterday\u2019s email. We will be taking up these concerns with University management and insisting that unnecessary anxiety and pressure must not be placed on our members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At 3pm on 5 April 2023, members in the Arts & Humanities received a communication from HR, addressed to them personally, inviting them to consider … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}