Working from home rights cause the ignorant head of HR at the new merging university in Adelaide to fall on sword. One wonders how many other dragons lurk in HR? Slay them all. Below is from the Daily Mail.
A university deputy vice-chancellor has resigned after facing intense backlash for making a controversial comment about staff working from home.
Paula Ward, who served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Adelaide University and oversaw human resources, resigned from her post this week.
Ms Ward addressed more than 1,000 staff at a ‘town hall’ meeting in late October and explained the university would introduce stricter work-from-home rules.
She claimed the new rules would prevent staff who worked from home on Friday and Monday from getting ‘four-day weekends’.
Outraged staff, who had connected to the meeting remotely, shared their thoughts online and described Ms Ward’s comment as ‘disgraceful’.
Ms Ward left the town hall meeting briefly before returning to apologise for her comment.
University staff raised concerns about Ms Ward’s work-from-home remark in a second town hall meeting last week.
Ms Ward was not in attendance at the second meeting.
Ms Ward faced intense backlash after claiming staff who worked from home on Friday and Monday were getting ‘four-day weekends’.
Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) South Australia Division, Andrew Miller, claimed ‘the roof exploded’ after Ms Ward made the comment.
Mr Miller explained the remark showed that Ms Ward, who was the head of HR, did not ‘trust the professionalism of staff’.
‘It showed she fundamentally … isn’t sensitive to their flexible work arrangements and their patterns of work,’ Mr Miller said,
“Because a lot of staff have caring responsibilities, children and other factors that have so far been accommodated in a progressive workplace.
“The Deputy Vice Chancellor promptly realised the error and apologised, but the damage was done”.
Ms Ward started her new position as head of human resources last year, with the role playing an important part in the merger of Adelaide University and South Australia University.