Advice for members in IT on the ‘Weekly 10’ performance management tool being implemented in IT from Monday 31 January. This post is from an email sent to UCU members working in IT on 27 January 2022 by branch president Chloe Wallace.

Dear members in IT

I am writing to you in relation to the adoption within IT of the Weekly 10 system, which I understand is to be rolled out from Monday. The headline of this email is simple: that we have been told that Weekly 10 is optional for staff and we advise you not to use it. To be clear, this advice applies to your engagement with your line manager – if you are a line manager and are required to use Weekly 10 with your reports, then you will need to do so, but we advise that you not use Weekly 10 for yourself.

There are a number of areas of concern for us. To start with, I want to be clear that IT management are not consulting meaningfully with UCU on this. UCU has raised objections which have not been responded to, let alone addressed, and any implication that we support this is very very wrong.

Weekly 10 seems to involve weekly meetings and I gather that monthly meetings are to be rolled out. These have not been negotiated with UCU as part of your terms and conditions, and imposing them in general terms is inappropriate for academic-related and professional services staff. They, alongside the other reporting mechanisms you are required to use, involve a level of micromanagement which is excessive and inappropriate.

There are significant concerns about the confidentiality of information entered into Weekly 10. The kind of information you are asked to provide should, at best, be confidential between you and your line manager and the onus should not be on you to make it private. If Weekly 10 is used to support SRDS, that also causes problems as SRDS discussions are supposed to be confidential under University policy.

We have been given no information about how long the data you input will be kept and who can see it. There is as substantial risk that data will be kept for a long time and may be used out context in ways which are detrimental. If you do have to use the system as a line manager please  be careful about what you write in comments.

Weekly 10 seems to be used to record HR data that is also recorded via SAP, which poses confidentiality/privacy issues – there should be no need to record it in two separate places. 

Weekly 10 is being used to set goals and targets. This should be done via SRDS which has a much clearer confidentiality rule than Weekly 10 has.

We are seeking further discussion from IT management and HR about this and will also be seeking national advice. 

Please contact us via ucu@leeds.ac.uk if you have any questions or if you meet any resistance with opting out.

Dr Chloe Wallace
President, Leeds University UCU

This page was last updated on 27 January 2022