Human Resources

A year of staff cuts.
I can't imagine a more difficult situation than we had to face in 2020 in the area of personnel. Our team has been reduced by 32 per cent to 144 staff members, and another 35 colleagues have been on short-time work almost continuously since March 2020. The rest of the team - 109 employees from the central administration, the day care centres and, temporarily, the university catering team in Landau, Ludwigshafen and Worms - held the Studierendenwerk together as best they could.

We very much hope that our decision to keep in touch with the 51 seasonal employees and to inform them about the situation of the Studierendenwerk will ultimately lead to a positive outcome when the pandemic-related situation has eased again. From the current perspective, a restart of university catering is not to be expected before the winter semester 2021 / 2022 due to the closure of the universities for face-to-face classes, should there not be further pandemic-related lockdowns in autumn 2021.

Short-time work
In 2020, the Executive Management and the Staff Council adopted a new staff agreement for dealing with short-time work. Unfortunately, on the one hand, the collective employment agreement of German States does not provide for a clear regulation on short-time work, and on the other hand, the Studierendenwerk is merely guided by said agreement. This means that it is always a matter of discretion how to deal with the Studierendenwerk employees in the event of a crisis. In 2020, the Staff Council and the Executive Management jointly decided that the situation caused by the pandemic should not be to the disadvantage of the remaining employees. With a view to the future of its operations, the Studierendenwerk could not afford to lose another 35 colleagues on short-time work in addition to 51 seasonal workers. Almost a year with only 60 to 67% wage replacement by the employment agency would certainly have forced some to apply elsewhere. Especially for single parents, the situation would have quickly become financially existentially threatening. With the pledge by the federal government in autumn 2020 to extend the short-time allowance for 2021 as well, the difficult, communicative situation in the human resources department was fortunately defused for our team and the uncertainty about a possible job loss among the staff was reduced.

The Studierendenwerk has topped up the short-time allowance from the Employment Agency. The top-up amounts of the short-time allowance were:

Furthermore, the staff agreement with the staff council excludes layoffs for business reasons until 31 August 2020. In 2020, the Studierendenwerk received a total of 600,421.45 euros from the Employment Agency for the payment of short-time allowances.

Home office
Since we have very consistently pursued the digitalisation of the Studierendenwerk administration in recent years, we were able to provide home office workstations in a very short time with the help of our IT department. A total of 27 workstations with associated hardware had to be newly acquired or reconfigured, set up and the colleagues instructed in their use in order to be able to ensure the smooth running of the work - also in the event of an infection at the office. All employees were obliged to carry their digital workstations with them as part of the company's crisis management, so that in the event of a quarantine ordered by the health department, work could be continued ad hoc and without any problems in the home office. It is gratifying that our IT was able to master this task so quickly and smoothly and that the colleagues concerned could be relied on at all times. This shows what a central role IT and digitalisation play for our company. We are happy to have mastered this hurdle very well, but we still see many challenges ahead of us.

Hygiene concept
The HR department was able to quickly and effectively work out and implement a hygiene concept for all departments of the Studierendenwerk together with DEKRA and the Studierendenwerk's quality management and update it again and again throughout the year. This enabled the Studierendenwerk to react very quickly to all legal framework conditions, to instruct its employees and to guarantee legally compliant operation in accordance with the applicable hygiene guidelines at all times. We have also cooperatively made our hygiene concept available to partners in the university environment. The expenses for the implementation of the still ongoing necessary hygiene measures resulting from the hygiene concept and the fulfilment of the legal guidelines are estimated to be in the mid five-digit range.
It was particularly challenging to establish a functioning communication to the team with constantly changing information on restrictions and hygiene guidelines and to make the temporarily applicable regulations transparent and understandable for everyone. This communication task tied up a lot of resources in the department and in the whole house and led to other tasks and planned projects having to be put on hold.

New time tracking system
In 2020, the department worked with IT to prepare the new ATOSS work time recording software and installed the necessary hardware for it at all locations in Landau, Ludwigshafen, Worms and Germersheim. The software then went into effect on 01.01.2021 and has been running smoothly ever since.

Workplace health management
We have suspended our health management for our team planned with the AOK Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland for the time being in the financial year. As soon as it becomes clear when operations can be resumed with the entire team, we will reactivate this important programme.

Conclusion
We do not believe that the university of tomorrow will become so digitised that significantly fewer students will come to campus. It may be that studies will become even faster and learning content can be taught even more flexibly, and spatial shortages in lecture halls can also be eased by digital offerings. However, we tend to assume that the universities, which have been growing steadily for years and usually suffer from a lack of space, will use digitalisation as an additional "learning space" for all content that can be moved to the digital realm. So in the future, we will have to deal with the fact in terms of personnel that the universities - if they use the resources of digitalisation properly - will stagnate for the time being at a pre-Corona level as far as life on campus is concerned.
For other areas - such as student counselling - the level of support will tend to increase. As direct, social interaction opportunities become fewer, the call for counselling will become louder. We have seen this more than clearly among students during the isolation phase in the 2020 lockdowns.

After initial concerns about the future of the Studierendenwerk, we are therefore positive about it, but would like to see much more communication at eye level in the university environment with all the players involved. Because excellent teaching certainly doesn't work without the Studierendenwerk - the social backbone of every course of study.
It is time to strengthen the Studierendenwerk again if we want to remain an attractive employer for well-trained staff tomorrow. For this, however, we need support and a political directive from our Ministry of Science and Health. We look forward to the joint discussions.