As planned, I organised a TEAMS call with a UAL representative from HR named Andrew Culver. Based on my findings from reading the policy documents I had prepared the following questions to use during our conversation.
Questions:
- Who is responsible for making staff feel “safe” enough to be active bystanders and/or have the confidence to report issues around harassment and bullying?
- Why are these policies written with a lack of encouragement? (I want to look at the dignity at work quick guide together for this question.)
Consent form:
Findings:
Regarding the first question, Andrew pointed out the UAL Staff Charter and a document around line manager expectations. And how they clearly explain the expectations placed upon all staff regarding looking after themselves and each other. These documents together with the policies I have read before set a very high level of expectation to how it would be to work within UAL.
He did share his own thoughts around the dynamics of “passing on responsibilities” within UAL, and how the way forward is not to rely on the traditional pyramid of power, where responsibilities get passed upward, but to instead start discussing social justice as a sort of star shape. Within this shape we can illustrate how the responsibility of tackling social justice goes up, down, back and forth. I really like this as a visual as the star is closed and goes in a sort of loop of responsibility where everyone is connected. No way to kind of sweep anything under the rug.
The second questions were a bit more straightforward. Where Andrew explained that the policies are there to be formal guides. When I asked, “Where does the more inspired and encouraging work around social justice supposed to happen?” he explained that in a perfect world it should happen within the teams themselves.
From my POV as an AL I think we could benefit from more encouraging language around social justice between colleagues, managers and students.
Using these findings I have now formulated a series of tasks and questions that I will be using in short meetings with other ALs to generate some imagery that will be used to support my outcome.