The University is launching an online Report and Support tool for staff and students later this year. Staff will be able to use the tool to report unacceptable behaviours either anonymously or by giving details of the incident.

Our recent staff survey showed that while improvements had been made in respect of bullying and harassment, is still remains an area of concern for the institution.

Creating a culture where we treat people with dignity and respect is a commitment we made in the Sussex 2025 Strategy and launching this tool just one of the measures we are implementing to promote an inclusive culture at Sussex. The tool will also link to existing sources of support, such as the Dignity and Respect champions, and other sources of staff support.

Assistant Director of Culture and Inclusion, Sharon Neal, said: “We need to understand and remove the barriers to people reporting incidents of bullying and harassment. This tool will give us better insight and understanding of what the issues are – and what we can do to address them as an institution.

“The tool is one of the many ways we are taking steps to promote an inclusive culture at Sussex where everyone can be expected to be treated with dignity and respect. It is key to culture change and we want to build trust and confidence in the tool at an organisational level.

“In addition to this we are planning to support our managers to have confidence in dealing with a situations involving disrespectful behaviour.

”We will also be going out to recruit more dignity and respect champions, so we can build on the successful network.”

We are running a number of focus groups, which will be open to any staff who are interested in seeing the tool and sharing their thoughts on how we can make this work for our staff at Sussex. We would encourage anyone who is interested to so that we can make the tool as effective as possible and matched to the needs of our staff.

Staff are invited to take a look at demo of the tool in advance of the focus groups and consider how it might work at Sussex.

Focus groups will be run on the following dates

• Thursday 22 April - 11:30 - 12:30
• Monday 26 April - 11:00 - 12:00
• Friday 30 April - 10:30 - 11:30
• Wednesday 5 May - 14:00 - 15:00
• Thursday 6 May - 13:00 - 14:00

You can now book your place on one of the focus groups

Creating a culture where we treat people with dignity and respect is a commitment we made in the Sussex 2025 as part of our Build on Strengths strategic ambitions.

What else we are doing to promote an inclusive culture

A reminder of our Dignity and Respect Policy; in 2020 we recruited and trained Dignity and Respect Champions who can listen and signpost people to the relevant support; and we now have a Dignity and Respect charter, which sets out the behaviours and standards we expect as an institution.

You can find full details of the courses we provide at Sussex to promote dignity and respect in the online learning section of our Organisational development pages. We would encourage all staff to take time to do those courses on the University's staff online e-learning platform, LearnUpon for free.