Dear UCCS faculty and staff,

We are continuing to see the future of work take shape at UCCS. I recently shared guidelines for implementing new work models across departments and units. Now, I’d like to share an additional guideline on meeting-free times.

Through surveys, listening sessions and meetings, we’ve heard that it can be difficult for some employees to complete work tasks because they spend so much time in meetings. To help, we are implementing pilot campus-wide meeting-free times on our schedules for the summer and fall 2022 semesters.

Beginning June 1, 2022, we will implement general campus-specific meeting-free times at the start and end of each work week. Mondays from 8–10 a.m. and Fridays from 3–5 p.m. will be cleared of scheduled internal meetings and reserved for focused work time, with only a few exceptions.

As a campus, we will commit to keeping these hours free, so we can focus on starting fresh at the beginning of each week and finishing work by the end of the week. Supervisors are further encouraged to be intentional and prioritize goals for their direct reports, so employees can complete their duties within their work week, such as addressing emails and phone calls during that time.

Please note there may be unavoidable exceptions to these identified meeting-free times. These exceptions might include meetings surrounding key campus operations or reasons outside of our control. We may also need to schedule meetings during these times when there are full-day finalist visits, or when we host the Board of Regents and other CU System meetings.

As I said when I shared guidance on the future of work at UCCS, any new process will ask us to be flexible and to make changes where they are appropriate. I truly appreciate the willingness of our campus community to speak up about challenges and concerns and share ideas to make UCCS an employer of choice.

Thank you for helping our campus to move toward greater positivity and productivity at work, one step at a time.

Respectfully,

Venkat Reddy
UCCS Chancellor