‘People First’ initiative established to understand COVID-19 pandemic impacts on staff

Published: 16 July 2020

Launch of new initiative to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on all staff to better understand inequalities and make recommendations on mitigating actions.

The impact of COVID-19 has been felt in many different ways, right across the University. Even now, as we move through the early phases of our recovery programme and start to see more activity resuming on our campuses, it is still far from ‘normal’.

The Senior Management Group is aware that these challenges continue to have implications for many areas of our working life, including health and wellbeing; development and career progression; and workload allocation, among many other things. We want to understand these better with a view to finding ways that might help to address them. To lead this, People First is tasked with understanding the issues that are creating or exacerbating concerns for colleagues, and to propose mitigation measures which can be implemented. We need you to help inform this process.

People First will be assessing the impacts that COVID-19 has had on everyone across all job families, and will make initial recommendations on next steps to SMG by the end of August.

The initiative will gather data and inputs to help assess and address the impacts on:

  • Workload distribution
  • Health and wellbeing
  • Development and progression
  • Recognising contributions
  • Promoting equality

If you would like to provide an input for People First to consider based on your experiences of the last few months, or have evidence of the impacts of COVID-19 on a group of colleagues (for example, results of a survey conducted with staff), please email peoplefirst@glasgow.ac.uk. If possible, please specify in the subject line which part of the University you are from.

We would especially welcome your suggestions on practical steps we can take to reduce or mitigate the impact.


First published: 16 July 2020