About us: Our vision
The Centre for Workforce Development (CWD) focuses on improving the ways that those who deliver healthcare, education, policing and other public services work together. We do this by evaluating how professionals are trained and how teams communicate, and through assessing the influence of human factors and the contribution that new technologies can make. Our goal is to optimise the systems within which people work, ensuring that professional workforce development is seamless, reducing unnecessary cost and improving outcomes for us all.
We aim to:
- Provide the best research-driven training and education possible, supporting public sector workforces, systems and programmes, and improving the lives and performance of those who work within them.
- Foster a vibrant and interdisciplinary community of researchers and practitioners motivated to study workforce development issues and to identify areas for improvement.
- Increase researcher capacity and capability within the area of workforce development, through supporting students and early career researchers.
- Collaborate with partners across the public sector and industry, fostering knowledge exchange and maximising the real-world impact of our research outputs.
Our impact on the world
Public sector workforces are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted our dependence on well-functioning and motivated healthcare and education systems, as well as the acute pressures experienced by the practitioners working within these and other vital services. At the same time, budgets are being squeezed, job vacancies are soaring and many professionals are taking industrial action, just as demand is rising. Meanwhile, technological advances such as remote-learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) simulations, are emerging that promise to radically improve the way that public sector professionals are trained, work together and deliver services.
Everything we do at the Centre for Workforce Development (CWD) is therefore geared to improving the performance of public services in these uncertain times, by motivating the people who work in them, and improving the systems within which they are working. We maximise the benefits of our research by involving professionals from the earliest stages in every project, ensuring that they shape our work so that outputs have an impact within their practice. Ultimately, we want the services that people receive across their lifecourse to be well delivered, sensibly, effectively and efficiently.
Our research is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically contributing to:
- Good Health and Well-being (SDG3), for instance, in our study on how best to debrief healthcare practitioners following high-pressure events.
- Quality Education (SDG4) through, for example, examining the use of VR simulators to train healthcare professionals to better empathise with service users, and the police in during stop and search exercises.
- Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG8), for instance, through our study on strike actions within the health service and their effects, both on staff and on patient mortality and morbidity.
- Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG9), for instance, our award-winning collaboration with industry partners to develop robust manikins for training paramedics and other healthcare workers.
Who we are
An interdisciplinary approach
The Centre for Workforce Development has more than 100 researchers and practitioners at every level of their career, and across multiple disciplines, from health, education, and psychology to the arts and humanities. This open and collaborative approach enables us to benefit from new perspectives and methodologies, increasing our effectiveness and efficiency, and maximising the quality of our outputs. Regardless of background, expertise and career stage, all our people are committed to transforming public sector systems and programmes for the benefit of workers and service users.
Partners
We collaborate closely, not only with other Centres across the University of Greenwich, but also with a wide range of external partners. Given the nature of our work, these primarily comprise public sector organisations, including local NHS trusts and hospitals, schools and other educational establishments, and police forces. These partners help us focus on the most pressing issues within workforce development, and they inform the questions we need to be asking to make progress. We also engage with private companies, particularly providers of simulation tools, such as LifeCast, CAE and Gener8. Our external academic partners, include Imperial College London, King’s College London, University of Leeds, University College London, Stanford University Hospital, Tulane Medical School Louisiana and many other higher education institutions in the UK and worldwide.
Funding
The work of the Centre for Workforce Development is supported by Health Education England and UKRI research councils, as well as through industry-based funding opportunities. In addition, our NHS partners sometimes join us in funding bids or will themselves commission us to carry out work.
Our research
A practitioner-led approach to research
A core strength of the Centre for Workforce Development are our close working relationships with practitioners on the front lines of healthcare, education, policing and other public services. These multidisciplinary collaborations allow us to identify and understand the key issues professionals face in terms of workforce development, leadership and communication. They also allow us to co-design and pilot new training and education outputs in real-world settings, and to evaluate their effectiveness and impact.
We apply our practitioner-led research to a number of interlinked research themes:
- Simulation
- Workforce Retention, Motivation, Resilience and Well-Being
- Communication, Teamwork and Leadership
- Professional Identity, Perspectives, Recognition and Responsibility
- Organisations, Systems, Technology, Planning and Delivery
Simulation
Simulation is a broad term to describe a variety of tools and technologies for replicating reality, used primarily to improve training, education and other development needs within a workforce. An example at CWD is our research with manikin simulators. These replicas of human beings have traditionally been used for training healthcare professionals and have had limited diversity, but we are now pioneering a more inclusive approach to manikin design that better reflect the society we serve. Manikins can help professionals develop greater empathy for patients, members of the public and other service users. We are also exploring the use of other simulation tools such as VR, digital twinning, and metaverse to gain a better understanding of their utility and effectiveness. Methodologically we are advancing the use of simulation as a method in transforming healthcare services through collective insight and learning. This emerging approach, termed ‘transformative simulation’, is useful for generating meaningful change and improvements within healthcare that are collaboratively constructed.
Workforce Retention, Motivation, Resilience and Well-Being
Given the pressures faced by many public sector workers, retaining and motivating staff is a critically important challenge. This strand of research explores issues such as the causes, impacts and ethical dilemmas of industrial action, ways to improve staff retention and how to better debrief practitioners following potentially traumatic incidents.
Communication, Teamwork and Leadership
How a workforce communicates – or fails to do so, is vital to effective, efficient and safe delivery of services. This also applies to teamwork and leadership. Here, we study topics such as communication in operating theatres and improving leadership in the police force. Recent examples include our scoping reviews into the impact and negotiation of hierarchy in healthcare organisations and into trust amongst staff in Higher Education settings.
Professional Identity, Perspectives, Recognition and Responsibility
Closely linked to staff motivation is the need to generate a feeling of identity within the workforce. This research theme explores how we can better understand roles and responsibilities in order to foster a positive culture. One recent project in this area examined the perspective of clinical research nurses on recruitment challenges.
Organisations, Systems, Technology, Planning and Delivery
How individuals and teams function and interact with one another is significantly influenced by the structures within which they work. This includes our research on transformative forms of simulation in healthcare. For example, our taxonomy of simulations used for non-pedagogical approaches within healthcare globally has generated a framework that will help to advanced the field and its application.
Publications/Output
View all publications.
Teaching and training
Teaching and training is a key function of the Centre for Workforce Development. This comprises the upskilling of internal researchers at every stage of their careers, alongside the development of external education and training opportunities for health, education, policing and other public services. External training and education may include virtual reality and manikin simulators.
News and events
The Centre for Workforce Development holds a variety of workshops for internal and public audiences, covering the range of research we undertake.
