Implementing the Researcher Development Concordat

The number of researchers attending training has almost doubled, with a 91% increase from 2017/18 to 2018/19. Of our 2018/19 cohort, 97% indicated they were satisfied/very satisfied with the training available and 99% would recommend the training. 

The Department of Biology has developed resources for PIs to support their discussions with researchers as part of the annual Performance and Development Review (PDR) process.

Key priority areas include discussion about citizenship and the roles people wish to take on, mentoring, managing workload and effectiveness, and identifying impact from research.

The department has also actively encouraged staff with relevant research portfolios / projects to undertake secondments or fellowships in areas of policy and/or industry interest (eg Biosciences Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship, Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering).

Ahead of the PDR, postdoctoral researchers are strongly encouraged to make use of the University’s ‘Looking Beyond Horizons‘ career development resources.

This tool is designed to enable researchers to conduct a skills analysis, to consider career options and to create a Professional Development Plan (PDP) to elicit career development discussions during the PDR.

To promote uptake and facilitation of the PDP, all new PIs are now assigned an academic mentor who will provide support and help navigate the systems in the new location – this is particularly useful for ECRs.

These relationships are cultivated over years but can also be transient in nature (eg person A mentoring for issue X; person B for job Y).

The Biology Postdoc Society has been active since 2011 and has been the blueprint and inspiration for other ECR forums at York.

The short-term nature of research contracts means that there is a relatively quick turnover of ECR committee members.

To circumvent this academic staff and experienced researchers have been recruited as core members to stabilise and enable continuity and sustainability of the society.

As a result, there has been a significant increase in the last 12 months of networking and career supporting activities within the department including the ‘Shaping the research culture in Biology: the Postdoc Voice’ championed by the Head of Department and a number of initiatives including Postdoc Appreciation Week, for which the society invited testimonials from PIs recognising the contribution of their researchers collated on Padlet.

Postdoc profiles are also tweeted to raise awareness of individual researchers’ contributions to the culture and environment in the department.

Plans are under way to transfer the success of these initiatives to other departments via events such as the York Researcher Festival.