Resources

The University achieves equity and diversity including through its plans, policies, monitoring, reporting and guides to best practice.

Summary of support offered for staff or students with carer responsibilities.

A carer is anyone who looks after someone on an unpaid basis, either for a child or a friend/family member who, due to illness, disability, mental health problems or addiction, is not able to cope without their support. Most people will experience some caring responsibilities during their careers. Caregiving responsibilities can have a big impact on your career. The University of Auckland has several equity policies in place relevant to carers and these will be summarised here.

Work, Life, Family and Carers Policy:

This policy aims to support a balance between work, family and personal life and to support practices that enhance staff health and wellbeing. It achieves this by having a framework that provides flexible employment practices. More information can be found online. There are several relevant documents linked to from this page, including for parents (information on parental leave, guidelines for babies and children on campus and guidelines related to parking for staff with family responsibilities) and for all carers a link to the flexible work policy and procedures.

Flexible Work Policy:

Flexible work arrangements include, but are not limited to: part-time work, changes to hours of work, leave without pay, partial retirement, reduced responsibilities, working from other places, job sharing. The University of Auckland specifies that (to do this formally) requests be made in writing to your line manager or Head of Department; there is an application form on the policy webpage.

Merit Relative to Opportunity Policy:

This policy was established to ensure a fair and equitable evaluation of merit when circumstances have affected staff members’ participation in their work (including carer responsibilities, ill-health or other career interruptions). Employment-related decisions including appointments, access to career development and progression, and promotion must be based on merit and take into account the quality and impact of the individual’s achievements relative to opportunities available.

Useful webpages:

A useful webpage for parents can be found here. There are toolkits available for both staff and students with carer responsibilities. These contain a lot of information but will be specific to your situation. These toolkits can be found online.