Breadcrumbs
- Home
- Research staff
- Research staff blog
- The SDR - practical or practically useless?
The SDR - practical or practically useless?
06 November 2009
By Matthew Salois
Some time ago, I had the experience of completing my Staff Development Review (SDR) and quite honestly I do not know what to make of the experience. I am not sure if all universities in the UK have a similar process, but Reading supposedly uses the SDR as a formal mechanism for career planning and management. I see the hypothetical value in the SDR, but I am left wondering if the SDR can deliver on its promises.
Part of the objectives of the SDR are to:
-
dentify training and development needs for current and future roles.
-
plan for the future and agree specific objectives to achieve those plans.
I found completing the SDR a sincere process and felt that my reviewer was genuinely concerned about how I was "getting along" in my work. He took interest in discussing what actions I have taken, and plan to take, to advance my career beyond the fixed-term postdoctoral contract.
However, five months after my SDR, nothing is different. In fact, I haven't even been able to work on my personal objectives for career development (which was setting time aside every week for learning Bayesian statistics). Not surprisingly, the big issue seems to be a lack of time.
My department is fully behind me in developing my career, however, I simply find the demands on my time far too great. Aside from the pressure to obtain results, there is the constant pressure to write papers, present at conferences, and network.
I am also applying for jobs right now (which adds to the pressure) and apparently the only thing that matters in obtaining a lectureship or becoming an assistant professor is publications. Several job posts I looked at even stated they would not even consider candidates unless they had at least three publications that would be rated a 3- or 4-star on the RAE scale. Mind you, this was for an allegedly "entry level" position.
So, is the SDR useful? Apparently, the only thing that matters in the development of my career is simply the number and quality of publications I have to my name. I do not mean to unjustly and unfairly criticize the SDR for what it is trying to do, but my opinion is that it lacks relevance given the criteria for getting out of the perpetual postdoc - publications, and lots of them.
Sarah Davies06 November 2009 at 02:47 PM
permalinkreport this comment
It must be that time of year - my department is currently in the throes of its ASR (Annual Staff Review). My experience is also that the impact of this tends to be neglible, other than to take up time that both reviewers and reviewees could be using in other ways - for example to write those 3 or 4 star publications. It's also frustrating that the forms we have to fill in are in no way tailored to specific jobs or situations, meaning that a lot of the things that we have to discuss seem irrelevant or suggest a degree of autonomy that many of us don't have. Am I being bad tempered and unfair? Has anyone had more positive experiences of these kinds of processes?
Angela Mortier06 November 2009 at 03:57 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Although I've come across this view alot, it is inevitably from the people who actually get offered some form of SDR. In my experience, this is not the norm. From that point of view, when you're in an environment in which 'the system' believes it's important to hold SDRs, you've probably already solved the associated issues of the awareness of research staff development requirements. There is another way I prefer to look at this problem. It comes under the heading of breaking out of your short-term views and into long term goals. If you can manage your time so as to engage in SDR activites (such as taking an hour a week to learn Baysian statistics) then it is building the habit of acting upon your long-term goals which is important, rather than the long-term importance of Baysian statistics to your research in particular. It seems to me that professors with large teaching loads who continue to carry out significant pieces of research have learned that particular time-management skill along the way....