One of the United Kingdom’s leading universities is “absolutely committed to development”, not only of its students, but of its teaching staff, according to their Talent and Organisational Development Consultant, who explains, “For academics, development is about academic promotion, but for professional services personnel it is about career development within their discipline, which might not mean becoming a more senior manager, but becoming an expert in a particular area.”
With many companies freezing recruitment due to the recession, widespread retention challenges and widening skill gaps, development is increasingly important for all organisations. The consultant explains, “Even during the pandemic, we continued with our career and skill development programmes. We have a wider University Strategy and a People and Culture Strategy. As part of the latter, we look at staff wellbeing, progression and development.”
Faced with the pandemic crisis, the university introduced a new development programme, aimed at increasing the self-awareness of academic and professional services staff. The consultant says, “We have existing senior leadership development programmes and programmes for early career managers for both our academic community and professional services staff. However, we had identified a gap between early career management and senior leadership, so we created a new leadership development programme in 2020. We wanted to make it as broad and engaging as possible, so as well as workshop activity, it involves action learning alongside psychometrics.”