Here are the CU Branch questions (anonymously) submitted to the VC and Chief People Officer Roadshow on 17th June 2020.

Let’s see if they respond!

Accommodation and City of Culture:

• If students do not use accommodation to full capacity will Coventry University be opening up unoccupied student accommodation to support the local homeless population?  This would be an important gesture towards the local community considering Coventry is the City of Culture 2021.

COVID-19 Savings:

• Are there any figures available on the savings made during COVID? There are no field trips, no staff flights, hotels. No business class tickets for management.
• To mitigate impact of possible idle capacity and to benefit more staff, would you consider expanding the 50% fee discount for staff relatives beyond offsprings – e.g. to siblings, parents, cousins, nephews, nieces – if taxation and other rules/guidelines/policies allow? 

Equality and Diversity:

• What is the ULT doing about the appalling lack of diversity of its members? Not a single person of colour on this list.
• What actions will be taken to balance the lack of BAME contribution to leadership roles at school levels and faculty levels?

Health, Wellbeing and Work Intensification:

• What measures are you putting in place to mitigate health and social impact on staff taking on extra workload, constantly put in the position of exceeding contracted hours and foregoing annual leave rights, as a result of the hire freeze?
• How fair is a system in which tasks and deadlines pile up more than available time to do them, where productivity is maximised while resources are constrained, whereas performance expectations are high so mostly unachievable without significant personal sacrifice?

January Starters:

• There has been a lot of talk about January starters but what happens when we hit the annual winter flu season and no-one knows if they have flu or COVID? Surely, we should be trying to get as many students in F2F in September not January.

New Working Patterns:

• Now our ways of working have had to change and the possibilities proved, will the University be reviewing its future approach to flexible working to facilitate this more than has been in the past?
• In particular, are there any policy towards condensed hours and other ways of organising work delivery which still satisfies all operational requirements, having previously been told this option did not apply to most roles. 

Rebalancing and Democratising ULT & SMT:

• We previously did not have large line-ups of deputy and associate VCs, deputy and associate deans, deputy and associate heads of school yet when these posts were created with reductions in course-supporting administrative staff there was no corresponding increase in capacity at customer-facing academic levels of course directors and course teams on whom these deputies and associates exert constant pressures mostly of administrative nature. Would it be cheaper to: (1) reduce these leadership / strategy roles, returning some of the holders to teaching to ease pressure on academics; (2) re-boost course administrative support staffing? 

Redundancies and Financial Savings:

• When are you going to announce when we are going into consultation for redundancies?
• Which departments/schools/faculties/subsidiaries are you closing down or merging?  When by?
• With current employment freeze, and long authorisation process for any exceptions, are you deleting/erasing posts vacated recently (resulting in service gaps) despite business needs, partly arising from demands of shifts in delivery, without consulting staff unions? Does this amount to ‘backdoor redundancy’ of posts vacated through natural attrition (resignations, secondment, etc)?

 Reward Package Review:

• You sent an email early in January to inform us all that the University has approved the review of the reward package. What is the update on this review and when should we expect the new package to be communicated.

Structural and Institutionalised Racism:

• What commitment and solidarity of support we can expect from CU to address institutional and structural racism? 
• The statement that was released from the press office is light touch and doesn’t go far enough. It gives the responsibility to individuals to seek support when experiencing racism, but as we know from the discussions following the brutal execution of George Floyd that racism is structural and covert. Can we expect an internal investigation addressing this and experiences of BAME staff at CU? 
• Recent surveys and reports indicate that disproportionately high impact of COVID-19 on Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people is partly due to discrimination, including racism, in NHS. Given this insight, what measures are you putting in place to monitor and address possible systemic/institutional discrimination impacting negatively on health and careers of minority staff and students?