TRAINING & SKILLS
THE CASE FOR FAIR
ACCESS
Fair access to technical career progression is key to sustaining the skills needed for the lab technicians of the future, argues Jiteen Ahmed, head of technical services at Aston University
L
ooking back fi ve years, I would never have anticipated that the pandemic lockdown could help advance the
technical profession in UK academia and research. But it did. Within weeks of launching the
Research England funded TALENT Programme in March 2020, lockdowns were put in place and technicians were the people maintaining laboratories, managing research equipment, 3D printing ventilator parts and visors, carrying out compliance checks and supporting the rapid pivot to remote learning. The unprecedented circumstances
shone a light on the critical value of technical contributions in academia and research, supporting TALENT’s vision to advance status and opportunities for the workforce. Covid aside, this programme was
the largest ever investment into UK technical careers, at the time, and has since achieved tangible and transformational change for the technical workforce.
INNOVATION AND IMPACT There was a huge knowledge gap about technicians in the sector. What is a technician, what do they do, where do they work? The breadth and depth of technical roles and careers have made defi ning the community challenging, and the lack of standardised job roles and titles in the sector also contributed to this.
48
www.scientistlive.com TALENT published six research
reports providing new insights into the technical workforce. The most signifi cant, the TALENT Commission, provides new strategic data on the workforce and sets out a blueprint for the future of UK technical skills, roles and careers. I have personally seen changes at
Aston University as a direct result of TALENT. More technical staff are being recognised as co-authors on research papers. Technicians are being named as inventors on patents, which have since commercialised to a multi-million-pound spinout company. Our technicians are becoming co- investigators on research grants off ered through the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Technicians’ voices are also being heard on decision- making boards, such as the Senate, senior management and health and safety committees.
VISIBILITY AND RECOGNITION At Aston University, we are exploring new technical career pathways to unlock progression opportunities that simply didn’t exist before. The University of Liverpool,
University of Warwick and Loughborough University have also made changes to organisational structures to improve recruitment, retention and recognition of technical professionals.
Having started as a regional
programme for technicians in the eight Midlands Innovation universities (Aston, Birmingham, Cranfi eld, Leicester, Loughborough, Keele, Nottingham, Warwick), the pilot initiatives have gained traction. Now the focus is on sharing this success with other institutions so they can see the wider benefi ts of investing in their technical workforce.
HOW DO WE SCALE OUT SUCCESS The UK Institute for Technical Skills & Strategy (UK ITSS) is taking the most successful initiatives from TALENT and scaling them out nationally. Including pioneering leadership programmes to technician- led equipment sharing and knowledge exchange placements. In collaboration with the Technician
Commitment, UK ITSS continues to foster a culture where technical professionals are fully recognised and valued. To avoid a widening gap between
institutions which commit to championing the role of technicians, and those which don’t, we need buy-in across the whole system to achieve sustainable changes that will strengthen technical skills and capacity.
For more information visit:
www.itss.org.uk
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