Career Development Working Group: Professional Support Staff

The Professional Support Staff Career Development Working Group focuses on developing and optimising the support given to support staff to develop their careers. This includes organising events within the department as well as signposting to University-wide initiatives. 

Our working group assesses, consults, prioritises, plans and implements actions within topic areas, identifying survey items and reviewing responses. Our working groups sit underneath the People and Culture committee and we meet termly.

PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT STAFF WORKING GROUP MEMBERS

Wendy Howard is lead of the group.

The Department has approx. 90 Professional & Support Staff (PSS) who provide a key role supporting the department’s research and teaching activities. 

Some key career development resources of particular relevance to PSS staff can be found at the People and Organisational Development (POD) unit.

POD houses a huge amount of supportive detail including apprenticeships; mentoring and networks; self-development and management, as well as learning and development opportunities for professional services staff.

ACTION PLAN

Our group aims to provide support in a number of ways:

• Signposting events at the University and/or Division levels – there are lots of events/programs happening, but sometimes they are hard to keep track of.
• Increasing awareness of different career paths
• Provide access to job seeking skills – we provide access to training on certain skills which can improve your job search (e.g. CV workshops) via workshops/events.
• Promote a consistent process – thinking about your next step often gets pushed aside. We try to promote the ongoing planning and consideration of your career to help you be ready when an opportunity arises.

ACTIVITIES

Reminder: 10-days Professional Development 

All Staff, including PSS, are entitled to engage in a minimum of 10-days of professional development pro rata per year.  The Department of Psychiatry supports the development of staff in any chosen subject field or topic of professional development, whether directly or indirectly related to an employee’s job role.  For more information, including applying to the Staff Development Fund, please see the Department's Sharepoint page.

June's PSS & Career Development month, 2024

In June 2024 we held a 'PSS & Career development' themed month. This involved a number of activities aimed to support & guide both current PSS staff and researchers/students that may be considering moving to a PSS role. We organised a session on coaching: “Coaching: what, who, when?" delivered by Dr Jane Walker. On the 26th we held a “PSS Career Journeys” seminar where our very own David Hyland, Lisa Jones, Val West & Pamela Reid spoke about how they got to where they are today, including all the ups and downs!  A “Career Strategy & Planning” Career’s service training session was also delivered by Susan Black (for Academics and PSS).