Developing Your Research Staff

What is the rationale for doing this?

How does it fit with institutional strategy?

What are the main features of the provision?

What are the aims and expected outcomes?

The institution is committed to supporting the personal, professional and career development of postdoctoral research staff and this initiative is the first of several where we will be working with the supervisors and Principal Investigators who manage research staff.  This event was a half-day session with several speakers from across the College talking about their experiences and a networking lunch.  We also had a speaker from the BBSRC to give the funders' perspective.  The Vice-Principal for Research and Innovation chaired a Question and Answer panel at the end of the event, which gave this event high-profile support.

The main aim of this event was to encourage managers of post-doctoral researchers to think about how they can support their personal, professional and career development and to inform them of the opportunities available within the institution.  The most important outcome was that 40 academics attended and engaged in discussion about the development of their researchers, which is an important step in a cultural shift at the College.

Are there any pre-requisites for engagement, e.g. levels of skill, years of experience, essential pre-activities?

How many participate in each 'activity'?

This was aimed at academic staff managing post-doctoral researchers but no formal prerequisites were established for attendance.

How do you monitor effectiveness?

Who do you seek feedback from?

Do you have benchmarks?

The benefits are for both post-docs and the academic staff, in that the academic staff are better informed about additional support that is available for their researchers and for their own practice as managers.  The researchers will benefit by having more enlightened managers who will support their personal, professional and career development.

The challenges were to get the academics to attend.  We overcame this by asking Heads of School and high-level College officers to lend us their support and send out emails encouraging academics to attend.  More people were willing to come when they realised that we had a speaker from the Research Councils and the Vice-Principal for Research and Innovation on the panel.

We now see this as linking in with more work at local, School and department level to support the development of researchers. Work is beginning with 3 Schools and we hope that this will expand further over the course of the coming year.  Ultimately we would like to be working with the academic staff in all 9 Schools at King's to support their management of post-docs.