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Message from Professor Mike McGuckin, Deputy Dean MDHS

"Change does not happen overnight. We understand that to see change, we must turn a lens on ourselves, to recognise our own attitudes and biases, as well as the formal structures the impede progress. In the spirit of curiosity, compassion and justice, I encourage you to be open, to learn and adopt new ways of thinking and doing and to actively take on responsibility for yourself and your team members, colleagues and peers, calling out poor behaviour and learning from the experiences of others. All faculty leadership is committed to these aims and willing to be held accountable for our actions. We are confident we can make the faculty an even better place to work and further enhance our productivity and academic achievements.”

As a faculty whose fundamental mission is to contribute to the health and wellbeing of our society, we must also be an organisation that looks after our own.

‘The Setting the Standard’ program introduced in 2018 signalled our intention to improve workplace culture.

The Faculty is committed to ‘embedding the standards’ of a safe, inclusive, and diverse workplace that manifests our values. What do we mean by this?

Safe: A workplace that strives to provide a physically and emotionally safe environment and has effective processes in place to address accidents and incidents that threaten the physical and emotional health and safety of its workforce. An organisation that protects its members, calls out poor behaviour and holds individuals to account.

Inclusive: A supporting and nurturing workplace in which people are made to feel welcome and that they belong, regardless of their age, gender, sex, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, religious identity or background and that removes barriers and strives to support people who face mental or physical health challenges to be able to do their work effectively.

Diverse: A workplace that sees diversity as a strength, with people bringing different perspectives and life experiences to their work, teams and decision-making. That seeks to be fair and to actively recruit and promote people from diverse backgrounds and identities.

With a diverse and large faculty that encompasses a number of departments and centres with undergraduate and graduate research students, researchers, teachers, clinicians and professional staff, the faculty is taking leadership to send a strong message about what we expect from our members and the type of organisation and people we strive to be.

The faculty leadership reinforces its commitment to standards by embedding rewards and consequences into our PDF, promotion and recruitment processes; holding individuals to account via formal KPI’s around documenting reports and acting on poor behaviour; improving gender equity and diversity and building gender equity and diversity into our staff profile at all levels, in our committees and groups of influence, and in positions of leadership.

We are listening: Through reports from staff and the ECR survey

We are acting: Through the working group I lead, we are identifying the areas of need, setting and embedding the standards we wish to see and implementing change across the faculty.

Throughout 2021 and 2022 the MDHS Embedding the Standards will see a coordinated rollout that reflects our values and is aligned to central University messages delivered with regards to the Sexual Harassment Policy and the Diversity and Inclusion strategy.

Please use this website to:

Professor Mike McGuckin
Deputy Dean, MDHS

In Conversation, Professor Jane Gunn, Dean MDHS and Professor Duncan Maskell, VC, University of Melbourne

Watch the short video  of the conversation between Professor Jane Gunn and Professor Duncan Maskell about about the work being done to embed good workplace behaviour standards  in MDHS and across the University.