Ryerson Recharge: Prioritizing employee wellbeing; extended Family Day weekend
On January 31, students, faculty and staff began a gradual return to campus, with a full return expected by February 28, 2022. I’m looking forward to the increased energy on campus as in-person collaboration, support services and engagement resumes.
While recent public health updates show improvements, which, along with Ryerson’s multi-layered approach to safety on campus enable us to welcome back our students, faculty and staff, we know that the pandemic continues to impact our wellbeing. Over the past two years, we have all had to adapt to unprecedented change.
In the summer of 2020, we launched Ryerson Recharge to address the added mental health challenges caused by the pandemic. As we enter the third year of the pandemic, it continues to be critical that taking care of ourselves and our loved ones be our first priority.
Prioritizing time to recharge
To recognize that each of us continue to deal with the impact of the pandemic, I am announcing two additional Ryerson Recharge days for all employees:
- The university will close for a mental health day on Tuesday, February 22, extending the Family Day long weekend to four days.
Employees who are required to be on campus on February 22 should work with their leader to choose another day off based on operational requirements. - An additional Ryerson Recharge day for all employees who report vacation and other absences through eHR.
- This can be used any day of your choosing before June 30, 2022.
- To use this day, follow the standard process to submit vacation time in eHR and select “Ryerson Recharge” as the absence name.
Continue to work together to implement work norms that support wellbeing
These two days are a complement to the work norms that were introduced at the launch of the Recharge initiative, and we hope that together they continue to support employees in prioritizing their wellbeing.
While we know work norms are not a one-size fits all, we continue to encourage leaders and staff to work together to implement strategies that support wellbeing wherever possible. These include:
- No evening or weekend emails unless urgent
- Meetings conclude by 6 p.m. at the latest
- Book meetings in 50 or 20 minute increments
- Consider using the Gmail “scheduled send” function when sending emails outside of work hours
Practicing these work norms will be especially important as we work towards increased activity on campus and more hybrid ways of working together.
For additional support
Leaders looking to support employee wellbeing during the return to campus process should review resources available online.
I also encourage leaders, faculty and staff to review and take advantage of the resources available on the Ryerson Recharge website.