Encouraging open and honest conversations key to supporting the transition back to campus

As SFU students, faculty and staff prepare for this fall’s return to campus, many leaders are looking at ways to best support their teams during the transition back.

For instance, how should supervisors approach masks with staff members having varying levels of comfort around their usage?

The key, says Trevor Davis, Executive Director of Research Operations in the Office of Vice-President Research and International, is to be respectful and to encourage open and honest conversation with team members about what they are comfortable with.

“As a supervisor, you want to make sure that you’re talking to everyone and that everyone feels comfortable to speak up,” says Davis, who oversees SFU’s central research operations, as well as Core Research Facilities like ImageTech, 4D Labs and SFU's Big Data Hub.

In the present Stage 3 of SFU’s Campus Recovery Plan, masks are recommended indoors for people who are not fully vaccinated. People are asked to respect individual’s personal choice about wearing masks.

Similarly, leaders are also thinking about how to best support staff in meetings where a portion of the team may be working from home because of hybrid work arrangements or because of a positive COVID-19 test or exposure, or any illness symptoms.

With some employees working from home and others in office, Davis says it’s important to note that people not in the boardroom are at a significant disadvantage. To counter this, he recommends using rooms with large screens so that people’s faces command presence and orienting rooms so that people in the room are looking at the people who aren’t there.

“It’s a matter of running the meeting with the people on-screen in mind. In the old days, joining a meeting by phone meant that you were often forgotten.  We’ve now had a year to learn how to do this properly. For example, let the person on the screen speak first, or explicitly seek their input when there’s a discussion and everyone is contributing. I think if we just set up some basic etiquette guidelines, we can make those hybrid-meetings work.”