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Anti-Stress and Bullying Week starts today

19 November 2012

Today marks the start of an Anti-Stress and Bullying Week (19-26 November) in post-16 education organised by UCU.

On Thursday (22 November) UCU will release the results of a survey of 14,000 higher education staff, working in 92 UK universities, which questioned them about the nature of their working relationships - including bullying at work.

The survey calculated a stress score relating to relationships at work for each individual institution, and an average stress score for all the institutions. The results are compared to the equivalent score for the general British working population.

UCU branches are invited to take part in activities to highlight Anti-Stress and Bullying Week. Follow this link: Workload campaign

Sister union, UNISON, which represents non-academic staff in colleges and universities, has expressed its support for the week, and will be encouraging its members to take part in events.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'We hear so many anecdotes about stress caused through bullying and harassment in colleges and universities up and down the country but this survey promises a much clearer picture of how prevalent these toxic working relationships are.

'UCU is campaigning hard about these issues as part of our overall workload campaign. Increasing workloads, aggravated by performance management techniques, is regularly cited as members' number one concern, and the source of much stress and unhappiness at work.

'We are asking institutions to properly recognise and address these issues at a time when cuts and policy changes have ratcheted up the pressure on everyone working in post-16 education.'

Last updated: 11 December 2015

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