We work closely with the human resources team to represent the views of FMD staff and influence the development of staff friendly policies.
Queen Mary supports staff in their career and personal development, and delivers this through 2 areas:
Any Queen Mary employee can apply to work flexibly by requesting a change to their contract. There is no automatic right to work flexibly but we do have a duty as an employer to deal with any requests in a reasonable manner.
Pre-COVID my usual hours were 8am – 4.30pm (Mon-Thurs), and 8am – 3pm (Friday), which enabled me to pick my daughter up from school on a Friday.
This option allows flexibility at the start and finish of the working day, and also allows an accumulation of hours at busy times. This means that employees can more easily fit work around personal commitments and the office benefits by having a more flexible workforce.
Remote working is where an employee meets their contractual obligations by working from home or another location outside their normal base on an occasional, temporary, regular or permanent basis. There are many types of jobs that could enable staff to use this option either occasionally or regularly. It may be the case that a particular task needs completing which could be done more easily in a home environment, such as writing a report. There may also be occasions when it is more convenient to work from home for personal reasons, for example when attending medical appointments.
This option is useful if you want to continue working the total number of hours you currently work and retain your current benefits but would prefer to compress the hours into a shorter working week or fortnight, allowing some ‘free’ time during the normal working week. The work patterns proposed will be considered to see if they are workable within the department concerned.
This is a variation in the arrangement of hours where staff work to an annualised contract rather than a weekly or monthly number of hours. They may work more hours at particular times of the year to take account of seasonal peaks and troughs in their workload. The hours to be worked by each employee are negotiated in advance, and can vary on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
This arrangement involves staff working either fixed patterns of work which vary from the norm (e.g. night work only) or which vary from day to day and week to week. Typically, shift work is designed to provide cover for longer hours than would usually be worked by the majority of staff, may cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Working staggered hours mean that although staff work fixed hours every day, the start, finish and lunch times could be agreed to suit personal needs. This is particularly useful if someone has fixed activities to be accommodated each week, such as care duties. This option could mean that potentially the workplace would be staffed for longer hours than normal if staff were working different ‘shifts’.
There are many job roles that involve a range of duties, which could be shared by 2 people. Not only does this create additional employment opportunities, but offers increased flexibility in employment arrangements particularly for those who wish to work part-time while retaining a high level of responsibility. There are a number of patterns for job sharing such as:
Due to personal commitments, there may be a number of occasions when it is more beneficial to work reduced hours, either on a temporary or a permanent basis. It may also be a recommendation from Occupational Health to work phased hours either before or after a long period of absence. Reduced hours on a permanent basis can include the following arrangements:
Find out how to apply
Alongside tackling global medical problems and improving the health of millions our work helps to inform our staff policies. The two schemes outlined below have been developed by Queen Mary as a result of research undertaken by the school. Working at Barts and The London means that in addition to being proud of the quality of research produced by our faculty, we can be sure that it will help to develop staff policies that assist us in our day-to-day work.
Queen Mary recognises the physical and emotional stresses of undergoing fertility testing and treatment and wishes to support its staff who are going through these processes. Our Fertility Treatment Policy is intended to support and assist staff members in the logistical and emotional aspects of undergoing treatment by allowing them reasonable adjustments while undertaking such treatment. This may be a combination of time off for medical appointments, working from home, or sick leave.
View our fertility treatment guidance
Queen Mary recognises that going through the menopause can be a difficult time some people. Our Menopause Policy is designed to support staff members going through the menopause, and offers a range of reasonable adjustments for staff who are experiencing acute or chronic symptoms.
View our menopause policy document
Find out more about our faculty and its mission
Find out more about the equality, diversity and inclusion work that's taking place at our university
View the internal information pages for our current staff (log in required)
Visit pages with information about the support services and tools available to QM staff (log in required)