[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”on” _builder_version=”3.17.6″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″ specialty_columns=”4″][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column_inner type=”4_4″ saved_specialty_column_type=”2_3″][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=”3.17.6″ featured_placement=”above” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.6″]<\/p>\n
Our institution is one of three spearheading the Research England-funded Prosper<\/a> project. In partnership with the University of Liverpool and Lancaster University, we are working to redefine how the UK HE sector approaches postdoc career development. We aim to open up the huge talent pool within the postdoctoral community to the benefit of postdocs, Principal Investigators, employers and the wider economy.<\/p>\n This summer, Prosper\u2019s resource portal for postdocs and Principal Investigators will be launching here in Manchester. In September, up to 90 postdocs from across the three partner institutions can apply to join the project\u2019s pilot career development programme.<\/p>\n Why Prosper?<\/strong><\/p>\n The demand for permanent academic positions exceeds supply, yet the career development provision offered by institutions can reinforce that demand, by privileging the academic pathway above all else. As a result, there are many highly skilled professionals who have the potential to add value and thrive in a variety of career paths, but for whom academia is the only route they have considered or feel equipped to fulfil. However, we know that adaptable, intelligent and highly skilled people like postdocs are vital for employers and the economy as a whole, especially as we enter the post-pandemic world.<\/p>\n Reports such as Wellcome\u2019s \u2018What researchers think about the culture they work in<\/a>\u2019 demonstrate the need for a new way of thinking about postdoc career trajectories and how we give parity of esteem to whichever career path is\u00a0 chosen. So Prosper aims to offer an innovative approach to career development.<\/p>\n Involving employers<\/strong><\/p>\n Employers have long understood the benefits of bringing on board graduates, but what about postdocs? Employers have been slow to access the talent pool of the highly skilled and motivated postdoc population, which is often invisible beyond academia. Prosper is working with employers, putting postdocs in the spotlight as some of the best and most able future employees there are.<\/p>\n The early fruits of this work have shaped Prosper\u2019s first postdoc career development pilot, and University of Manchester postdocs will have the chance to apply to join the pilot career development programme in September.<\/p>\n Creating space and access <\/strong><\/p>\n The Prosper team\u2019s research has shown that many postdocs want to engage with development activities but have felt unable to engage with everything that is on offer, whether because of caring responsibilities, lack of managerial support or other barriers. Perhaps one of the greatest barriers for postdocs considering their career development is time. \u00a0Finding time to think \u2018what else?\u2019 is often a luxury that busy researchers can\u2019t afford and is frequently trumped by the more immediate question of \u2018what next?\u2019 that\u2019s demanded by a career path characterised by short and fixed term contracts.<\/p>\n Prosper aims to avoid traditional barriers and open up new ways of delivering for postdocs. While the arrival of Covid-19 brought real challenges for us all, we learnt new ways of working and engaging with one another. These lessons are informing how we ensure multiple access routes to our approach.<\/p>\n The Prosper portal and career development pilots will curate resources and interventions that postdocs can be confident will offer them development that will make a difference to their careers. By applying our employer insights, we can ensure postdocs are well-prepared to succeed in any career they choose.<\/p>\n Recognising the role of Principal Investigators<\/strong><\/p>\n Principal Investigators are key to empowering postdocs to use the time, afforded through the Researcher Development Concordat<\/a>, to take the right action to develop their careers. The Prosper project will work with PIs to create the resources they need to bring out the very best in their postdocs and support their career development.<\/p>\n Accessing the resources<\/strong><\/p>\n Prosper\u2019s goals are ambitious. Ultimately, the project aims to create an approach that transforms the career development landscape for all postdocs, but success depends on culture change and co-creation of resources.<\/p>\n From July, you can access the Prosper portal via the link below and applications to join the Postdoc Career Development Pilot will be open from September. The Prosper team would love to hear your feedback. If you have thoughts, experiences or reflections relevant to Prosper you can leave a comment here or you can contact the Prosper Manchester lead, hellen.parraflorez@manchester.ac.uk<\/a>, or tweet us @ProsperPostdoc<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”3.17.6″ prev_text=”Previous” next_text=”Next” in_same_term=”off” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=”3.17.6″ custom_button=”on” button_text_color=”#ffffff” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Related posts” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ locked=”on”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=”Subscribe” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”et_pb_widget_area_3″ locked=”on” \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”sidebar-1″ show_border=”off” locked=”on” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our institution, in partnership with the University of Liverpool and Lancaster University, is spearheading the Research England-funded Prosper project to redefine postdoc career development. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":3522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" [et_pb_section bb_built=\"1\" fullwidth=\"off\" specialty=\"on\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"][et_pb_column type=\"2_3\" specialty_columns=\"4\"][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=\"Row\"][et_pb_column_inner type=\"4_4\" saved_specialty_column_type=\"2_3\"][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" featured_placement=\"above\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"]<\/p> When I\u2019m out and about meeting staff I hear much debate about the why, what, when and how of change in our University. I wanted to share my thoughts on this often contentious topic \u2013 and hear your views too.<\/p> Early in 2020 we will launch our University\u2019s new vision and strategic plan \u2013 Our future. In order to fulfil Our future we need to ensure that we are in a financially sustainable position so that we have the funds to invest in the new staff, facilities and infrastructure which will be needed to bring our plans to life.<\/p> Our Financial Statements<\/a> for 2018\/19, which have been published following approval by the Board of Governors, confirm that more than 95% of our \u00a31.1bn income is spent on our core goals - on our staff and our students - to deliver research, education and social responsibility; with the remainder invested in the long term sustainability of our University. You can find a summary<\/a> of the Financial Statements on StaffNet.<\/p> However, this is a testing time for UK universities, due to the many external factors that have an impact on us - current home tuition fees are falling in real terms, whilst our costs (not just pay but non-pay too) are increasing. There are further and even greater tuition fee funding risks outlined in General Election manifestos as well as a range of Brexit-related risks that could affect our operations. The Office for Students (OfS) demands that we demonstrate both value for money for our students and our financial sustainability (in the sense of being able to invest to deliver our ambitious strategy, rather than survival). There are, of course, also ongoing unresolved national issues around pay and the continuing challenges around funding pensions in the higher education sector.<\/p> Our Financial Statements show an improved operating surplus (3.7% of income compared to \u00a324.7m (2.3%) in 2017\/18), with a rise in income from tuition fees, education contracts and research. As I mentioned earlier, we re-invest the surplus we achieve each year in activity in line with our strategy. Recently our funds have been used to create some new academic and Professional Services posts; to invest in key infrastructure including IT; to invest in some new buildings like our student accommodation at Unsworth Park; to improve the student experience by funding more full-time Residential Life staff and to upgrade a range of buildings and research and teaching spaces and resources. Increasingly it is also invested in environmental sustainability and meeting our ambitious carbon targets. So even when we are making difficult decisions in some parts of the University we continue to invest our surplus.<\/p> Whilst we have reported an operating surplus, our Board of Governors expects us to deliver a much larger surplus than this (at least 5%) if we are to be sustainable in the long-term. Our strategic change programme (including IT Modernisation<\/a>, the Student Experience Programme<\/a>, and the Research Lifecycle Programme<\/a>), alongside our continuous improvement plans, will ensure that we create the financial headroom to invest in people and facilities. The strategic change programme will also enable us to embrace new technologies and new ways of doing things that better support all our staff and students to be the best that they can be.<\/p> Yes, this means that some individual roles will change. New roles (some that we haven\u2019t yet identified) will be created and some roles will no longer be required. I appreciate that this will cause some uncertainty and where that is the case we will do everything we can to support staff, but the alternative is that we never change anything. If we fail to take advantage of advances in technology and develop more joined-up ways of working we will ultimately find ourselves outdated in the eyes of future students, funders and other stakeholders. Staff want to work for a progressive and successful institution, of which they can be proud. This means we cannot stand still.<\/p> When I talk to staff and students I often hear their frustrations about how difficult it be can be to get some straightforward things done, grappling with paper-based, manual and repetitive processes, on outdated systems and infrastructure, all of which serves to increase staff workloads. Everyone wants to do a good job, but regularly feel that our world-class status is earned in spite of our internal systems and processes, not because of them.<\/p> To deliver our new vision and strategic plan we will need to embrace new opportunities and face challenges with courage and determination. That will sometimes mean we have to make tough decisions and no-one is claiming it will be easy or that mistakes will not be made along the way. But where we do have tough choices to make we will commit to implementing changes fairly and with compassion to support the wellbeing of all our colleagues.<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" prev_text=\"Previous\" next_text=\"Next\" in_same_term=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" custom_button=\"on\" button_text_color=\"#ffffff\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Related posts\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" locked=\"on\"]<\/p> [related-posts-thumbnails]<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_3\"][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=\"Subscribe\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"et_pb_widget_area_3\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"sidebar-1\" show_border=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3529,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions\/3529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Related<\/h1>\n
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Clive Agnew and Simon Merrywest: NSS results<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Colette Fagan and Chris Pressler: A position statement on Open Research<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Patrick Hackett: All change?<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/div>
Improving our financial performance will help to deliver our ambitious future plans, but we must also increase our capacity to create the funds and time to invest in our core goals. One of the ways we can do this is by changing what we do and how we do things.<\/p>Related<\/h1>