Your Workload Working Group will contact the Health and Safety Executive with further concerns, following their dissappointing response regarding work-related stress as follows:
Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments
Our Workload Health and Safety Reps have repeatedly asked to see evidence of Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments and to this date, we have not received a single one from the Health and Safety or Human Resources teams at the University. There is no evidence that the University’s own stress management policy is being followed nor that any mitigations are in place and enacted to prevent work-related stress.
Organisation Stress Risk Assessment
The Workload Health and Safety Reps conducted an inspection into the University’s ‘Organisation Stress Risk Assessment’ and concluded that the Organisation Stress Risk Assessment was inadequate as a number of mitigations included in the document are non-existent.
Freedom of Information request
A Freedom of Information Request confirmed the following:
- No workload models are in place for our APM colleagues across the university, or for our colleagues in Engineering.
- From 1 September 2023 – 25 November 2024, 7420 working days were lost to Work-Related Stress absences
- 4 out of 5 faculties have average workloads of over 100%
- 12 out of 23 schools have average workloads of 100% or higher, with some school’s average workloads as high as 116%
Effects of Future Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is currently undergoing a restructuring programme entitled Future Nottingham and has not provided:
- Evidence of stress risk assessments concerning the planned increase in staff:student ratios from 1:14, to 1:22.
- Adequate evidence of stress risk assessments in relation to Future Nottingham more generally.
- Evidence of stress risk assessments in relation to course closure threats