Communications & Engagement

Page updated 23 November 2023

There are several channels available to communicate messages and information to internal audiences.

• For advice on communicating with faculty, staff and the wider UCD community please contact (opens in a new window)Mark Simpson – Culture & Engagement, UCD HR.
• For student communications contact (opens in a new window)Emma Caron, UCD Registry.

The guiding principle is to target communications, as far as possible, to the cohort of colleagues that the information is intended for. The following description of some of the key communication channels may assist you to do this.

UCD Events Calendar - Events, Webinars, Symposiums

Launched in January 2019, submitted events are published to the UCD Events Calendar (www.ucd.ie/events) with a weekly events e-zine issued on Thursday mornings covering the forthcoming week (Mon-Sun). The events e-zine is issued to all employees making this channel more effectvie than the traditional group emails. A featured event is also posted to the UCD homepage (www.ucd.ie). To submit your event please visit the UCD Events Calendar and follow the link to Submit New Event.

Most common reasons events are queried / declined / not appearing

• Submission is not a class / course and not an event
• Image not present / image incorrectly sized
• Event not submitted in time (at least 5 working days)

UCD InfoHub - News

UCD InfoHub – my services & information portal, now has the ability to display news items on its homepage. Similar to the UCD Staff E-zine, news items are submitted via the same form in the (opens in a new window)Targeted Communications System and are limited to a headline, 30-40 words and a link. Priority is given to new initiatives and information that is applicable to most colleagues.

For further information contact (opens in a new window)Mark Simpson – Culture & Engagement, UCD HR.

Targeted Communications System (TCS)

This system, available via (opens in a new window)InfoHub, allows you to  email selected groups of colleagues or students.  The system can be accessed through UCD Connect by selecting the InfoHub icon and then Systems tab in the top navigation (connect username and password required). Care should be taken to ensure correct targeting of emails  and overuse avoided so as to maintain the effectiveness of this means of communication. For events, webinars or symposiums the Event Guide has proven to be more effective than group emails.

The ability to email all faculty and staff is restricted. However, if you feel you require an email to be circulated to all faculty/staff then please contact (opens in a new window)Mark Simpson – Culture & Engagement, UCD HR.

Employee Survey Guidelines

Consulting with and asking for feedback from the UCD employee body is an important tool for developing university strategy and its implementation. It is therefore vital that this resource is protected to ensure that the employee voice is available when required. The occurrence of survey fatigue needs to be avoided. This can an easily happen when too many surveys are issued to the employee body and/or actions arising from survey feedback is not evident.

To protect this important feedback channel, surveys disseminated to all employees is limited to include the Culture & Engagement Employee Survey; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Survey; UCD Commuting Survey and surveys supporting occasional strategic projects.

Where deemed necessary, all other approved surveys that need to consult with the employee body can be issued via inclusion in the staff e-zine.

It should be noted that:

• to be statically robust, a large number of responses may not be needed;
• surveys should be targeted as much as possible to the relevant audience (location, type, demographic);
• conducting surveys puts an onus on the unit conducting the survey to meet any requirements under ethics, GDPR or other mandated controls;
• sending a survey individually to numerous schools and units across the University is deemed a contravention of the sprit of these guidelines.

Communicating with former employees (Exit Interviews)

In December 2019, UCD introduced a new “exit interview” questionnaire emailed to all employees who resign from the University.  

Employees’ views of the University environment and their experience of working in UCD are very important to the University. Information obtained during an exit interview process can inform how aspects of the University may be enhanced thereby helping to make UCD a better place to work and an employer of choice. This process will also support the achievement of UCD’s (opens in a new window)strategic objective to ‘attract, retain and develop an excellent and diverse cohort of students, faculty and staff.’