At the last meeting of its inaugural year the SCC reviewed it's progress, and plans to publish a News and Views special in the Michaelmas term to update staff on its achievements. Existing members have been nominated to remain on the Council for another, to provide consistency and build on the work of the last year to get the Council up and running. Training over the summer has been arranged which will help the SCC to develop further as a team and think about the year ahead.

Among the issues discussed at this meeting the SCC considered arrangements for the LSE counselling services and whether more could be done to support this valuable resource. A report was received from HR on current investigations into graduate teaching assistants and other hourly paid teaching staff terms and conditions. While much was being considered under the teaching task force the SCC were interested to learn about the process and to ensure that hourly paid staff were involved in the consultation process. The SCC would continue to take an interest in the developments of the teaching task force and wishes to be update on its progress.

Other areas that the SCC would be investigating further after initial discussion at this meeting included School cleaning contracts, SCC suggestions boxes for staff and assaults on staff. It was also decided that up to three members of staff could observe an SCC meeting, with the SCC reserving the right to close any part or all of the meeting if deemed appropriate. The next SCC meeting will be in October.

20 June minutes to follow

30 May 2008

May's meeting included:

Chris Higgins, the Director of Estates, reported on the Estates strategy for the next 15 years as well as developments over the course of the summer that will be taking place.
A report from Ann O'Brien the LSE Health & Safety advisor on stress in the workplace. Anne explained that a pilot survey had been produced and circulated to four volunteer departments. This survey was produced in response to the Staff survey conducted in November 2006, where it was highlighted that 26% of staff completing the survey indicated that they suffered too much stress at work. There are plans to roll out a larger survey across the School to help understand what the School can do to improve the workplace for staff to minimise the causes and effects of stress.
It was highlighted that the terms for the reduction of tuition fees for staff were being reviewed by the relevant committees. They are looking at suitable packages of benefits for different types of staff categories such as PhD students, who are often enrolled as students before they were employed as staff. SCC are to request consultation before a final decision is made.

Further details in the 30 May Minutes (PDF)

13 February 2008

The third meeting included:

A report on "Communications" from SCC members, including a provisional logo, plans for this website & a dedicated email address (scc@lse.ac.uk).
Ann O'Brien, the LSE Health & Safety advisor reported on the Health & Safety Executive's visit.
A discussion on matters arising from the staff survey including integrated inductions for academic & non-academic staff to help reduce barriers between the two
A discussion on work-life balance, a topic to be revisited in the near future

Further details in the Draft Minutes 12 February (PDF).

29 October 2007

At the second SCC meeting members started to explore some of the issues highlighted at the initial meeting.

The discussions focussed on:

issues relating to part-time and hourly paid staff
a desire to make Internet access available to all staff
concerns over staff harassment from students, and in particular how staff deal with students who have mental health problems
a need to explore some dissatisfaction with the working environment as highlighted in the staff survey
work-life balance

A number of actions were agreed upon - see Staff Consultative Council Actions 29/10/2007 (PDF). In particular it was decided that the focus of the next meeting should be work-life balance with the views of staff to be canvassed ahead of the next meeting. A Communications group was also established to look at how best to communicate with staff, especially those without direct representation on SCC, for example contracted cleaning and catering staff.

28 June 2007

The inaugural meeting of the Staff Consultative Council mainly focussed on establishing the purpose of the Council and how it would operate.

This resulted in the creation of an ‘agenda committee’ who would be responsible for deciding on what would be discussed at each SCC meeting. The nomination of the SCC’s representative to the Council (LSE’s governing body) was also discussed but not agreed upon.

There was a discussion about how SCC should communicate with and represent all staff at the university with members being concerned that groups of staff not directly were represented whether or not they had a member on SCC.

The meeting covered the relationship between senior management and the SCC and it was decided that SCC wouldn’t have a member of senior management in attendance and that it was important to be independent. However the SCC would had the ability to request attendance of senior managers and other staff at particular meetings.

The meeting concluded with members raising areas of interest they would like to see the SCC focus on. These were: harassment of staff by students, academic/administrative staff relations, email etiquette, work life balance, the staff survey, the anti-harassment panel and communication and integration across the LSE. See SCC Minutes 28 June 2007 (PDF) for further details.

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