King's Principal's COVID-19 Update - Human Resources

A message from Dr. David Malloy, King's Principal, to the King's community:

As the holidays are approaching, I join our staff and faculty in looking forward to taking a well-deserved break, a just reward for all of the efforts we have displayed in the days, weeks, and now months since King’s became a virtual campus. There have been so many teams and departments who have understood the importance of crafting new, virtual methods of providing the services necessary to maintain daily operations at King’s.

The hard work, creativity and dedication of the Human Resources team of Julie Horne, Erin Wilson and Lisa Bayer has been pivotal in allowing King’s to move to a largely virtual campus as quickly and smoothly as we did while providing support when our community needed it most. Our Human Resources Department has continued to provide the services on which staff and faculty have come to depend. In order to do so, they have developed a number of ways to continue to assist our employees as they navigate their way through this new normal.

Despite the pandemic, the Human Resources Department has maintained their daily operations. The Job Grading Committee work has continued to ensure fair pay. The negotiations of the King’s University College Faculty Association (KUCFA) contract were successfully completed via a switch to virtual negotiations. Over 360 employment contracts and employment offers have been created and processed with a smooth transition to virtual processing.

Our HR Department has made the continued focus on the physical and mental wellness of our employees their top priority. The HR team was a crucial member of the COVID planning groups, assisting the Joint Health and Safety Committee and also helping employees who needed to isolate or needed extra support.

HR has held several virtual Lunch and Learn workshops for employees on dealing with the pandemic and each have had great attendance. As well, they have distributed valuable resources on coping as well as encouraged all staff and faculty to reach out for mental health counselling.

They have employed virtual tools such as Zoom, email and telephone meetings for interviews, employee inquiries, and the successful onboarding and orientation of new hires. They have continued to develop and distribute training to employees via HR Downloads to ensure compliance continues, even under these circumstances.

While many of the annual special events for staff and faculty were cancelled this year, I want to thank the HR team for all their innovation in order to continue a King’s tradition by honouring those members of staff receiving Long Service Awards, which will happen on December 17 during a new drive-through, contactless version of our annual Christmas lunch.

I am proud to see the incredible team effort that the Human Resources Department has made in conjunction with the various departments at King’s. They have accomplished all of this while saying farewell to one key member of the team, Shaila Matthews, who resigned from King’s to focus on her family. The HR team misses her and hopes to have a replacement starting in the new year.

I hope these messages highlighting the hard work, determination and innovation that the King’s students, faculty, and staff continue to demonstrate have provided inspiration as we continue to work our way through this pandemic. As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions via email.

For more information on King's and COVID-19, please visit our COVID-19 page.

As always, take care of yourself, take care of each other and we will update you on how we are taking care of this place, and all the people who work here, for your return.