In this blog post Nicola Cuthbert, Researcher Development Manager at the IAD, provides an update on two new initiatives that aim to support the sharing of practice and experience between colleagues at the University of Edinburgh
Do you often ask a colleague for their opinion or advice?
Has a group brainstorming session allowed great ideas and initiatives to start?
Do you value those interactions with colleagues that allow you to network and find out what they are involved in?
We all do these things; they are useful ways to get new ideas and inspiration.
One of the biggest hurdles we may come across when starting something new is not knowing where to start, or what to do, and often you just need that initial seed of an idea to get you going, which can usually come from someone’s experience or advice.
We’ve found in our training and events that hearing from someone who is in a similar role can be a valuable experience and often the feedback we get is it was the most useful aspect of the training; it’s often inspirational hearing what others have been involved in.
So, with this in mind we have created two initiatives to allow University of Edinburgh colleagues to share practice, ideas and advice, and support others to develop and progress.
Concordat Best Practice webpage.
Our first initiative allows colleagues a platform to share examples of projects/initiatives from their area, related to the Concordat.
The Concordat is a national agreement between stakeholders to support the career development of research staff. It’s a framework for anyone at the University who, as part of their role, supports research staff, and it’s for research staff themselves. For further information have a look at our previous Concordat themed blogs and our Concordat webpages on the Research Staff Hub:
As a signatory to the Concordat, the University of Edinburgh has created an action plan based around the Concordat principles (Employment, Environment & Culture and Professional & Career Development) and at institutional level, we will be working on various initiatives to support these areas. However, we also want to ensure implementation is happening at local levels and support is available to do this. This is where the Concordat Best Practice comes in.
Concordat Best Practice is a webpage which will house examples of Concordat activities at School/College level. It will allow us as an institution to communicate and promote the work that we do, to practice share, inspire, support and encourage the re-use of initiatives and activities, and develop an online space for University of Edinburgh staff involved in the Concordat to view.
This is a new initiative, so we are currently looking for contributions. The Concordat can be hard to navigate, often it’s tricky to think what is needed or how to translate what it is into practice, so being able to see what others are doing, share practice and support each other, could be really beneficial. Please consider uploading information about areas of work that you have created, and initiatives you have developed. More information can be found here:
Examples: Concordat Best Practice
Submit an example: Concordat Best Practice – Submission Page
Leadership Stories
Our second initiative is focused on supporting the professional development and leadership skills of researchers at the University of Edinburgh, through leadership focused case studies. Our current Leadership Stories are from researchers who have taken on areas of leadership within or complementary to their role, or grabbed an opportunity to get involved in an area that has given them some leadership experience. The idea of the case studies is to highlight different opportunities that could provide leadership experience, as well as advice to anyone who is considering moving into a leadership role.
The University has leadership training and development available from the IAD and HR Talent and Development, including:
- Leadership resources and coaching for researcher representatives
- Research Leader Programme for new and aspiring PIs
- An online module course around developing your leadership as a researcher
- IAD leadership workshops
- Leadership training from HR Talent and Development
To compliment this, we wanted to provide a way to hear from peers on what leadership opportunities they undertook, how they got involved, what it entailed, the skills required and what advice they would offer.
Often confidence is a big hurdle to moving into roles that have more of a leadership aspect to them, so if you can support someone with your experience and knowledge, please do consider completing a profile. Further information: Leadership Stories
The main aim with these initiatives is to share practice. If you have anything to contribute, we’d love to hear from you!
