The Vice-Chancellor has set out a framework for how we will move forward together as a University community through COVID-19.
This follows his email to all staff on Monday 20 April 2020, which described some of the challenges universities, including ours, are facing while expressing confidence we can, with a concerted community effort, emerge in a strong position to continue our world-leading education and research.
After talking with over one hundred of the University’s senior leaders in an online Forum last Friday, he provided the same group with written direction for strategic decision making and business planning ahead. This is summarised below.
Please talk to your Dean, Head of School, Executive Director or Director of Professional Service if you have any questions.
High-level principles
As we navigate the coronavirus pandemic our strategic decision-making will be governed by these high-level principles:
- To ensure the continuing safety and wellbeing of our staff and students.
- To ensure the University emerges from the coronavirus crisis with our high-quality research and education infrastructure intact, and that we continue to provide the quality and breadth of education our students expect so they can graduate successfully.
- To sustain and strengthen our One Southampton community to ensure we have the ambition, the ingenuity, the flexibility and the agility to flourish in a very changed landscape.
- To take all necessary measures to ensure the University remains financially sustainable and has the ability to invest in the future.
- To deliver on our role as a civic and global University.
The immediate future (to 31 July 2020)
The approach we need to take for the rest of this financial year, ending 31 July 2020, is now clear, in the light of the substantial drop in revenue we face:
- To minimise all non-essential expenditure.
- To ensure tight control and scrutiny over any new staff recruitment – the bar should be set extremely high for taking on any new commitment.
- To review all our major 10-Year Plan projects, looking at stopping and pausing those that are not relevant for an immediate response to COVID-19, or could help us move to a new business model.
- To conduct a root and branch review of all our capital plans to ensure we prioritise investments that are essential to helping us through this crisis and are achievable in the current environment.
The 2020/21 academic year
Looking further ahead to the next academic year, the approach we will need to take is also becoming clearer:
- We should not assume that anything will stay the same, and that we will be returning soon, if ever, to a previous “normal”. We need proactively to plan for new ways of working, with full campus access by staff and students unlikely this year and possibly longer, new ways of delivering teaching, a challenging research funding environment, and a very different student recruitment market, particularly internationally.
- We need to draw on the lessons learned already and in the future from the COVID-19 crisis so we do end up with a “new normal”, with a stronger agile community that supports each other to achieve the University that we are all proud to be part of. The University will, and should, be a different institution ahead.
- In May, leaders will start the business planning process for 2020/21. As part of this they will need to discuss their initial thinking for how their department, school, directorate or Faculty will adapt and move forward in light of the consequences of COVID-19. Their business plans for 2020/21 will need to reflect the expected reduced revenue in all areas of activity, and are inevitably likely to be very different from previous years.
- To emerge strongly from this prolonged crisis, we will need to ensure the University is financially sustainable with the ability to invest in the future. To make this possible at a time of decreasing income, our leaders will need to take some tough decisions. One Southampton will mean taking decisions in each of our areas for the benefit of the whole university. This is a collective leadership challenge, not just a financial challenge, where the wider interests of the University are paramount.
