About us
The University of Greenwich is proud to have joined the Technician Commitment, a university and research institution initiative, led by a steering group of sector bodies, supported by the Science Council and the Gatsby Foundation.
As signatories of the Technician Commitment we pledge action to tackle the key challenges affecting our technical staff, those with technical roles ranging across teaching, research, facilities, media and IT, across the whole university.
We are committed to supporting our staff providing skilled technical and/or scientific support to research, education and enterprise across the four faculties of the university, technicians, scientific officers and professional demonstrators.
The Technician Commitment includes four key areas, visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians. These are all targeted in our action plan for the next two years.
Our two year action plan
| VISIBILITY | 1. | Create an online web presence |
| 2. | Create an inhouse technical staff directory/database | |
| 3. | Provide a biennial technical staff “away” day | |
| 4. | Identify all staff performing technical roles who are not in the Technical job family | |
| 5. | Set up Faculty email lists and a whole institution list of technicians | |
| 6. | Encourage Technician representation on School and Faculty meetings | |
| 7. | To align the University of Greenwich Technician Commitment group to the new People Board created by the updated University Strategy | |
| 8. | Develop University awards specifically for technical staff | |
| RECOGNITION | 1. | Source funding and promote funding for technicians to apply for professional recognition |
| 2. | Develop a clear code of practice for acknowledgment of technician contributions to publications | |
| 3. | Continue membership of HEaTED (Higher Education and Technician’s Educational Development) | |
| 4. | Enable technical staff to be able to access internal/external research & enterprise funding opportunities | |
| 5. | Acceptance of appropriately qualified technical staff to supervise research students | |
| CAREER DEVELOPEMENT | 1. | Begin to develop a visible pathway for all groups classed as ‘technical’, including Scientific Officer and Professional demonstrator strands. |
| 2. | Run training and networking workshops as part of a biennial technicians awayday. | |
| 3. | Ring fence funding to support technicians to attend relevant conferences organised by external bodies to encourage professional networking and cross sector learning | |
| 4. | Provide ongoing support for technical managers to develop line management skills | |
| SUSTAINABILITY | 1. | Expand and formalise a university wide apprentice technician programme, to complement our existing engineering scheme, leveraging the apprenticeship levy |
| 2. | Work with the Learning and development centre to ensure that technical roles are represented and involved in planned activity. | |
| 3. | Establish a long-term Technical Managers Group (post action plan development) | |
| 4. | Appoint a Technical lead for the Technician Commitment | |
| EVALUATING IMPACT | 1. | Technical staff response in the staff survey |
| 2. | Evaluate engagement of the technician’s Teams group | |
| 3. | Monitor technician involvement in events and professional registration | |
| 4. | HR to track career progress of the technical workforce, to provide annual demographics to include date by grades, gender and other protected characteristics possible in line with GDPR | |
| 5. | Review of progress to be conducted and communicated annually |