VC's update - the importance of leave

Hi all,

Thank you again to everyone who made time to attend the all-staff address on Thursday. I know it was a lot of information to digest, and I appreciate the work of leaders across campus to bring teams together to discuss the proposed changes and financial position of ANU. I look forward to seeing the feedback during the consultation phase and along with the senior leadership team, I’ll be continuing to host a series of townhalls this fortnight to answer your questions. 

As I mentioned at the staff address, one of the meaningful ways we can all help right now is to look at our leave liability – if everyone took one extra day of leave, it would save ANU $2.7 million. Salary costs are not just the fortnightly wages we pay, but the leave holdings we must accrue, including long service and annual leave. We assume each year that all staff take their allotted annual leave, as this has not been the case this year, we are forecasting a cost to the University of approximately $8m. At ANU, we have continued to increase our overall leave liabilities since 2019, and this means our staff are taking less time off than they did pre-pandemic. Currently, we see ANU annual leave sitting at 22.4 days, whereas our peers in the Go8 are sitting at 17.7 days. So we have some work to do here to both take more leave to ensure we balance health and wellbeing, along with reducing excess leave which will support crucial savings in salary.  And the reality is, we do need to bring our salary costs down and this is one way to have high impact on the budget bottom line.

I know that taking leave can be challenging, so it needs to be a collective responsibility to make this possible in every team across campus. This means ensuring we have clear leave coverage plans and that someone holds your delegations and you have provided handover documents so someone else can step in. In some cases, it also means having conversations about what won’t happen – and understanding why this is the case as we need to be able to support each other to take frequent breaks. 

In my own office, we are looking at a couple of options. Between now and the end of the year, every member of my team will be taking a long-weekend to recharge. As we head into Dec/Jan, we’ll be implementing a soft close to take a few extra days around the end-of-year shutdown to both give a longer break and help draw down the excess leave balances. I’ll also be taking some additional time around the shutdown, and have a plan in place with my senior leaders to ensure we all take a break and cover each other. 

Good thoughts to where this may find you,

Genevieve

Vice-Chancellor and President