Dr Ian Hancox

Presentation Abstract

Technicians are integral to the research, teaching and knowledge exchange that our higher education and research institutions provide. In 2017, the Science Council and Gatsby Foundation helped launch the Technician Commitment as a sector wide initiative, now at 120 signatories, to improve the visibility, recognition, sustainability and career development opportunities of technical staff. This has helped drive significant change across the sector, with support from funders such as UKRI as both employers and funders for technical roles.

At the University of Warwick, as part of our Technician Commitment we rolled out a technical job family that mapped all roles and gave an opportunity to update job descriptions. This includes managerial and technical specialist strands, enabling technical staff to decide which route they would like to seek opportunities for progression. In 2023, we launched our Technical Specialist Promotional Pathway in response to the recommendations of the TALENT Commission, which enables those on the specialist strand to apply for promotion based on individual merit against a range of criteria, in a similar manner to academic roles. With 14 promotions in the first annual round, we saw great success from the pilot and worked with the technical community to refine the approach. This is now in the second year of operation and has already provided benefits in staff recruitment and retention. This talk provides the background on the drivers for the pathway, how it operates and examples of successful applications.