UoS Technical staff play an important role in supporting students, teaching activities and research - with some technician’s researchers in their own right. With such a diverse range of expertise it is important that technicians are represented on University-wide initiatives to ensure the opinions and concerns of all technicians across the university are voiced and heard in the same way as other groups of staff, such as Academics and Professional Services.
To enable this to happen, it is vital that technicians are represented on all available Committees, Forums and networks requiring input from staff, currently these include:
Senate – one member of TAE
EDIC – TC SAT, AS SAT
AWERB, GMBSC
EDI, Full & Operational School Board, Health & Safety Forums + many others specific to the academic unit.
Currently technicians are not represented well from faculty level upwards with the TC Commitment only securing a single technical staff place on Senate in 2021.
Across the University technicians interact with a diverse range of subjects and staff and students and while representation is needed on committees (usually from senior technicians) – it is also vital all technicians in return engage with consultations, surveys and audits to ensure their voice is captured in the outcomes.
We were really pleased to secure funding for the NTDC Technical Skills survey, and want the outcome to be that Technical staff get improved access to training and allocated funding in each Faculty.
We want to create a comprehensive database of internal and external training courses and providers, and work to ensure that everyone has a meaningful and relevant appraisal conversation with their line manager. In addition, we will be working on making the Job Description library more useful to aid the recruitment process.