As members of the Healthy Universities Network (HUN), our Clinical Director has a clinical interest on the needs and specific issues of staff working within the further and higher education settings. The impact of working within an academic setting presents different challenges to those who work in other environments. Universities are often measured by prestige, ranking, student outcome alongside calibre and revenue, however without staff who are physically and emotionally well there can be a knock on effect through the whole of the University both financially and physically.

We also feel it is important to look at engaging staff at all levels.  EAP research looking at EAP usage in University settings (John B Franz, “Enhancing Faculty Access: A cultural challenge for EAP’s in Academe) looked at research showing low usage rates with academic staff compared to other staff within the University. Amian use such research when planning how to promote our services to all staff. We have found that our own usage rates within the University of Bolton, which show equal usage with academic and non-academic staff, show the importance of keeping abreast of research and the future of government guidelines to Universities via mediums such as the HUN.

Amian therefore are happy to attend on site promotion days at no cost to the University. We feel this gives us important opportunities to meet staff and explain our services in person. We have also attended staff conferences, management training events and health promotion groups. At Bolton University we attend their 3 monthly ‘Well U’ group meeting. This enables us to keep up to date and have an input with what is happening throughout the whole of the campus.

We also feel that writing relevant articles for in-house magazines or staff bulletins, providing information about our services and how they can be used by certain groups i.e. managers, sickness absence training, counselling skills training etc also helps to promote our service rather than it being just reactive.

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(c) amian 2009