People and Culture Committee

The Black Postdoctoral Network, co-chaired by MDR's Tanweer Beleil, was established in November 2021 to support the College’s Black postdoctoral researchers – those professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies.

The Network has been successful in the bid for funding from UKRI Research England Funding via the PFDC to support improving access to and participation in research for people from currently underrepresented groups. The awarded funds will go towards a symposium that will take place in June 2022.

The Network hosted the first Black Researchers of Imperial Symposium in June. The one-day event was a great opportunity to promote achievements, meet with colleagues and hear about the research conducted by Black Researchers within the College. It included a panel on the Variety of Principle Investigator/Permanent Researcher positions, where we heard about the different structures and expectations of PIs and permanent researchers from a diversity of institutions.

The Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction is proud to have signed up to the Menopause Workplace Pledge. In signing up, we commit to:

1. Recognising that the menopause can be an issue in the workplace and women need our support 
2. Talking openly, positively and respectfully about the menopause
3. Committing to actively support and inform our employees affected by the menopause.

The Menopause Workplace Pledge was launched in 2021 by Wellbeing of Women in collaboration with Hello! Magazine and Bupa to call on employers to take positive action and support everyone going through the menopause. Employers who sign the pledge are committing to: recognising that the menopause is an issue in the workplace and women need support; to talk openly, positively and respectfully about the menopause; and to actively support and inform employees affected by the menopause.

In the UK, there are nearly 5 million women working aged between 50-64 years. The majority of these women will go through the menopause, which frequently coincides with the peak of their careers, a time when they are at their most successful and productive. Employers can play a key and important role in helping women to manage their health and wellbeing at this stage in life. By doing so, organisations can help to ensure a gender-equal working environment, support women to reach their potential and benefit from the enormous expertise and experience that they contribute to the workplace. When we get it right for women, everyone benefits, both in the workplace and beyond.

The college offers information and support for staff going through the Menopause. 

Imperial Technicians' Network

The Imperial Technicians' Network is for all technical staff and aims to build links, explore areas of common ground and highlight opportunities for personal and professional development. It encourages an exchange of resources, knowledge, and experience through a regular newsletter and events for technical staff.

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Mentoring

The Department offers a mentoring scheme for all staff regardless of level.  Recently there was a drive to increase awareness of this scheme and going forward to increase the uptake by PTO level staff.  This also links in to supporting PTO staff in obtaining experience and gaining skills in other areas of the Department, Faculty, wider College and externally through secondments.

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The Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction works hard on outreach and public engagement by inspiring curiosity about science, connecting with society and providing opportunities for conversations, discussion and engagement between researchers and the public. We create projects, activities and events experimenting with new, creative ways of engaging with diverse audiences. 

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The Department recently ran an event called Black Lives Matter in Science and Medicine led by Dr Stanley Andrisse, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins and Howard Universities. 

Watch a recording of the event. 

The Department offers a mentoring scheme for all staff regardless of level.  Recently there was a drive to increase awareness of this scheme and going forward to increase the uptake by PTO level staff.  This also links in to supporting PTO staff in obtaining experience and gaining skills in other areas of the Department, Faculty, wider College and externally through secondments.

Find out more

The MDR Culture Survey included questions specifically related to PRDP. Based on the feedback received, the PRDP champions along with other members of the People and Culture Committee have identified three major focus areas to improve the PRDP experience for all members of staff:

• Training
• Communication
• Quality assessment

For training, we are working closely with the People and Organisational Development (POD) team to deliver tailored PRDP workshops to appraisers in the Department. These workshops were made available to all MDR appraisers for the first time in the last PRDP cycle and will now be offered at the beginning of every PRDP cycle after positive feedback from those who attended the workshops. Information on future workshops will be shared in the Department’s newsletter and is available here. There are still places available in the next sessions, which will be held online on 8/11/2023 and 5/12/2023. The registration form is available here.

For communication, we have implemented a strategy that will come into force this cycle, in which both appraisers and appraisees will receive specific email notifications about their PRDP status in the current cycle.

More globally, the PRDP champions are also engaging with representatives of different job families to understand where the PRDP experience can be improved, which will be coordinated with the ongoing Faculty-wide PRDP review. Our future activities will also include revision of the PRDP forms, working with focus groups to understand the current challenges and carry out longitudinal analysis of the PRDP uptake rates within our Department.

The MDR Culture Survey included questions specifically related to the Department's promotion process and will be updating our processes accordingly. 

Research England Funding – MDR postdoc support project “Regaining a Sense of Empowerment”.

Dr Véronique Azuara (MDR Postdoc and Fellows Academic Champion and co-chair of the MDR People & Culture Committee) and Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier (Make Time Count Ltd)

At the end of 2021, the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction ran its first Staff Culture Survey since its launch in August 2019 (pre-Covid pandemic). The survey drew attention to its postdoc community as being in need for tailored support as we emerged from the pandemic. Looking at survey comments posted by postdocs, there was a recurring theme of feeling alone and invisible within the Department. Alongside this, there was a sense of struggle around managing workload in the context of fixed-term contracts, keeping clarity in career development goals and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

The project aimed at equipping postdocs at an early stage of their professional journey with practical tools to create a healthy approach to career management and personal development for greater fulfillment and empowerment. 

This pilot project was funded by UKRI Research England and addressed the key area of enhancement “Improving research leadership skills across all career stages” as identified by Research England with a specific focus on early career researchers.

The below sessions formed an integral part of the project, and participants were asked to commit to all four of them.

Session 1 (April 2022) - Introduction to the project and the Grid^TM method.

The Grid^TM method, developed by Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier, has been called “an ingenious goal-tracking system with a strong visual element” by Psychologies Magazine UK, as well as a “complete life-saver” by academics and researchers, and a “very useful system to keep me sane” by PhD students during Covid. 

This first session introduced the method and provided postdocs with an opportunity to (1) reflect on the impact that Covid may have had on their personal development and well-being and to (2) help them understand and formulate their specific needs for greater well-being and empowerment pre, during and post-pandemic. 

Session 2 (May 2022) - Practical Career Management – Make Your Plans a Reality.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to career management in science often comes down to the lack of clear career paths. However, even when such frameworks exist, the challenge of needing to forge our unique path in the system is considerable. This situation can easily create anxiety, fear, and a sense of feeling stuck.

This session invited participants to sharpen their personal leadership skills to manage their careers. For this, we explored key skills that help us navigate and create career paths, went through specific steps that form the backbone of an effective mini career-management action plan, provided tangible ways of developing transferable leadership skills useful in academia and other jobs, and helped participants concretize action so they can plan ahead. 

Session 3 (June 2022) - Overcome Busy – Holistic Productivity for Better Work-Life Balance.

Being busy and being productive are not the same. In fact, research shows that having too much to do creates stress and pressure that erodes healthy agency, creativity, and wise action. And yet, when it comes to science, which is often based on doing what we love, work-life balance can be hard to delineate and maintain. In this context, it is easy to become busy and open ourselves to one of two beliefs: (1) I cannot/will not succeed and/or (2) to succeed I must work more! The first often leads to talented individuals leaving science, many of them women. The second belief fuels ways of working that are not sustainable and can cause great harm to the individual and their system. And yet with a little bit of insight, structure, and appropriate support, we can organize for genuine effectiveness, order, and meaningful results.

This session invited participants to explore the concept of holistic productivity. We workshopped what this means and how we can create it in science. This was done through a series of practical steps that left participants clear about what they wanted to achieve and how to support a healthy balance. This workshop also debunked some of the inaccurate beliefs that give rise to poor work-life balance practices, what drives them and workshopped ideas on how to protect against them. 

Follow-up survey to assess the impact on the project (July 2022). 

Sessions 1-3 were led by Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier and the MTC Team; Session 4 (survey) was jointly designed and analysed by Dr Véronique Azuara and Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier. 

Please see also final report on this workshop and other activities facilitated by Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier in collaboration with the PFDC.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/staff-development/public/postdocs/Empowerment-Workshop-Series.pdf

More information to follow.

An independent survey commissioned by the Faculty of Medicine highlighted challenges and barriers to women pursuing clinical academics roles, including problems around access to flexible working, work-life balance and support from leadership. The Women in Academic Medicine (WiAM) group was formed to address these challenges faced by women in the field and create a supportive community for them to come together to share knowledge.

The inaugural meeting, chaired by Professor Dame Lesley Regan, included talks from esteemed academic clinical speakers on ‘How I did it/what I have learned’.  The meeting was attended by over 90 people who listened to the inspiring career journeys of the speakers and took part in a Q&A session.

The second meeting, again chaired by Professor Dame Lesley Regan, focused on sharing knowledge and highlighting potential solutions to problems women face in a clinical academic career. This was achieved by inviting four speakers at different points in their careers, and not just focusing on the work aspect of their lives, but also how that balanced with their personal lives. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ plan for a successful career as a female clinical academic and the panel helped show that there are diverse paths and opportunities to succeed. The talks led to a lively discussion, with the conversations and networking continuing at a reception after the event.

The Department has promoted the Parental Leave opportunities the College offers its staff, including Shared Parental Leave. To help raise awareness of these policies, the Department shared an interview with Dr Edward Chambers, who took Shared Parental Leave. This interview was in addition to interviews done with other staff from across the Faculty, including MDR, and shared with staff as a FoM Blog.