Rewards and Benefits

As a member of staff at City of Wolverhampton College you are entitled to a number of rewards and benefits. These benefits range from healthcare plans, childcare schemes, and even a college lottery!

Take a look at what we offer:

The College offers a generous annual leave and Bank Holiday entitlement. The Annual Leave year runs from 1 August to 31 July each year, FTE holidays:

Managers 39 days
Lecturers 40 days
Support Staff 32 days
Bank Holidays 8 days

College Close Down Periods – The College has two ‘Close-Down’ periods during the academic year usually Easter and Christmas and the College can award up to 3 closedown days (at Christmas) in addition to the days listed above.

Employer enhanced pension scheme (TPS / LGPS) – employee contributions based on FTE salary
AVC’s via Prudential
3 times salary death in service benefit

Designated CPD days per year
Full directory of training courses on offer

Once you are an employee of the college you are given a log-in to your own portal that is personal to you. This means that you can change personal information, book your holidays, book onto training courses, update your KPI’s, see your payslips, submit mileage expenses etc from the comfort of your own home via your smart phone, ipad, computer as well as at work. This keeps your personal information in one place and easily accessible by you.

We have our own College Lottery!

How it works:

You give us your agreement to be a part of the Lottery
We deduct £1 per month from your salary
All the money goes into one pot
We put your payroll number into a file
A winning payroll number is randomly selected each month from those staff contributing
The winner takes all!

We undertake an employee survey each year usually in June. The survey covers a variety of questions that are aimed to capture the engagement and satisfaction of staff. We strongly encourage staff to complete the survey so that we are aware of the changes that staff desire, as without this information, we may be unable to be as effective in our actions to produce positive change.

Whilst whatever we do, we can’t please all of the people all of the time but our aim is to try and please most of the people, most of the time!

We offer enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay over and above the statutory requirements. We also offer the same enhancements on shared parental leave.

We also recognise that there are times when people are carers that unforeseen circumstances happen and staff can take paid Emergency leave.

Regrettably on occasions people lose loved ones and we have a clear policy that allows staff to have paid time off in these circumstances.

Over 1/3 of our staff also work fractional hours (which means that they are not employed as full time workers). This works well for many people for a variety of different reasons.

Celebrating Success

Each July we have a Staff Celebration Day for all staff. We run this at an external event and we celebrate staff success. The nominations for all awards include who both students and staff think should be rewarded. All staff have the opportunity to put themselves and others forward as individuals or teams for numerous awards. We also use this opportunity to welcome our staff apprentices and also to recognise staff’s long service awards.

Health & Wellbeing

The health and wellbeing of our staff is really important to the college and we support staff to have a healthy work-life balance.

Whilst the college runs many activities throughout the year on health & wellbeing activities, we have one day in July that the whole college meets on one of our sites and enjoys activities that are fitness, relaxation, hobbies, mindfulness related. Staff can chose how much or how little they want to do on that day which could be just bringing a book in to read, to taking part in activities such as: dog grooming, laughter yoga, learning how to build a brick wall, or taking part in team activities such as football or MissionPossible (you need to join us to find out what this is!!)

At the College we have an Employee Assistance Programme which is run by DAS who provide a Confidential Counselling Service Helpline to provide support and assistance with personal issues such as bereavement, divorce, and bullying.

All contact that staff have with this service remains confidential and is not disclosed to the College.

Paycare make healthcare cost recovery easy. Their Healthcare Benefits Plans include individual cover, family health cover and a senior plan for the over 64s. These benefit plans enable you to reclaim 100% of money spent on healthcare (up to an annual limit) for a simple monthly payment.

Their plans offer health cover for dental costs, optical cover and eye tests, chiropody, acupuncture, chiropractic, physiotherapy and much more. There’s even personal accident cover and hospital inpatient cover included in some policies. Refunds are prompt, usually within 48 hours of receipt, directly into your bank or building society account – so you are never left out of pocket for long.

For more information go to http://www.paycare.org/

We have engaged with Steve Woods – Director – Experiential Hypnosis Ltd, who is working with the College to assist staff with stress management. Some of these sessions will be group sessions and some individual. Steve runs regular sessions for staff on other topics including: getting better sleep and weight management as part of our Health & Wellbeing Strategy.

We work with Midlands Occupational Health Services (MOHS) who provide us with an Occupational Health specialist who works on site with us one day a week. This means that the clinical support and escalation of issues is contained within the professional capacity of MOHS whilst the College has the benefit of having an individual on site who understands the requirements of working in a College environment. During the time our Occupational Health Advisor is on site, they work with staff providing medical support following or during a period of illness, and conduct regular health checks for individuals who are identified as requiring support.

Staff Discounts

Cycle2Work also allows you to not only be green, get fitter and beat the morning commute, but you’ll also make huge Tax and National Insurance savings on the cost of a new bike and safety accessories. These savings are achieved via salary sacrifice and lets you spread the cost to make payments more convenient.

We have a well-equipped gym and sports hall on site at Wellington Road campus which is available for staff to use via a membership or take part in planned activities.