An update to staff and PhD students sent on Tuesday 17 March 2020
Dear colleagues
As you will be aware, shortly after we wrote to you yesterday about shifting decisively to social distancing and home working, the Scottish and UK governments announced wide ranging measures to combat the spread of coronavirus Covid-19. Everyone in the UK has been advised to avoid social contact with others and non-essential travel. People have been advised to work from home where possible.
Rapid shift to home working, access to buildings and building closures
Heads of School and Directors have been managing the shift to home working for all but essential functions as rapidly as possible.
For the avoidance of doubt, we expect:
- very few staff to be on campus after today
- even fewer by the end of tomorrow
- by Friday we expect access to the Old Aberdeen campus and its buildings to be permitted only in very exceptional circumstances with the authorisation of your Head of School or Director, with that access supervised by Estates
- Some buildings at Foresterhill will need to remain accessible, but again staff access will be similarly controlled by the end of this week
- At 5pm this evening, the Medical and Taylor Libraries closed until further notice
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library will remain open until 5pm on Friday (March 20) and will close at 8pm on Wednesday (March 18) and Thursday (March 19)
- More information on the library closures can be found here.
- All University catering outlets are now closed
- Catering provision will continue at Hillhead for remaining students in catered halls
The Government is telling us that Covid-19 will have long-term implications for the UK, and at the moment we do not know when normal services on our campuses will resume, but we should all expect this to be for the long haul.
Wellbeing
We understand these are extremely testing times, and support for both staff and students will remain available via remote channels. Full details of support available to students and staff can be found here. Please note, that these pages are being updated regularly with more resources.
Sickness Absence and Reporting
Staff who are experiencing ill-health related to Covid-19 should let their line manager know that they will not be available for work. The line manager or individual should also advise HR by emailing HR@abdn.ac.uk so that this information can be recorded. Pay for any Covid-19 related unavailability for work (whether on or off campus) will be paid on the basis of normal pay.
Staff who are unwell due to conditions other than Covid-19 should continue to report their absence in the normal way through the absence reporting procedure. PhD students should report absence through the School PGR administrator. Contractual sick pay and statutory sick pay provisions will continue to apply for these absences.
It is appreciated that due to the ongoing situation staff will be unable to access NHS Grampian in the same way as normal and therefore it is not expected that staff will provide medical certificates for Covid-19 related absences.
It is also appreciated that medical certificates for non-Covid-19 related absences may not be accessible as promptly. Staff will not suffer detriment where they have not been able to source a medical certificate during this period.
Annual leave
We have also received queries about annual leave. We will develop FAQs on this as soon as possible, but for now we want to signal that we will be exercising flexibility if staff wish to make adjustments to existing leave plans.
We would like to end by thanking everyone right across our community for the tremendous amount of work that you are doing to adjust at pace to the situation we face. We will continue to update you with developments, and to update our FAQs which are available here. If your questions are not answered there, then please contact coronavirus@abdn.ac.uk.
Best wishes,
George & Karl