Useful information
Induction
We value our research staff and offer a range of activities as part of the induction. Induction within the School has three main objectives:
- To help new members of research staff settle into their new environment
- To help them understand their responsibilities
- To help ensure the new research staff are introduced to other members of staff (academic faculty, doctoral researchers and other colleagues)
- To help familiarise new colleagues with the available (conference funding, grants, fellowships, etc) support at BSMS, at the two Universities along with those offered by other units and institutes.
The Academic Lead for Early Career Researchers, name, is responsible for delivering an induction to new ECRs joining BSMS.
Within the first couple of weeks, you will be meeting your Principal Investigator/Line Manager to discuss your work objectives and career development goals. In due course, you will also meet the Director of Research, Head of the Department, Research Lead and School Research Manager.
Start of contract discussion
Once you have settled into your new role and the School, the ECR Lead will get in touch with you - and your Principal Investigator/Manager - to remind you to have your ‘start of contract’ discussion. It is recommended that this discussion takes place fairly quickly - ideally within the first month of your research contract - for the agreement of initial research and career development objectives. To support you in planning your professional development you should refer to the Research Staff Professional Development Guidance.
The process will help you to establish yourself quickly in your new role, and identify any training/developmental requirements needed to support you in your role and future career aspirations. You might want to look at the guidance and templates to support your start of contract objective-setting and career development discussion to help you prepare.
Work in progress meetings
The Work In Progress (WIP) meetings provide an opportunity to present your work and hear updates from research happening across BSMS. They are a great opportunity to present to a friendly and helpful audience, to get presentation practice, and get broad input into your research. The WIPs are primarily designed to support PhD students and ECRs, and talks can be used to describe research plans for new projects, present research updates and challenges for ongoing projects, or get input into more complete projects before conferences attendance/publication. Due to the supportive audience, we encourage you to use the WIP as a chance to generate ideas on how to overcome challenges. Show us your failed experiments! Pizza is provided to aid discussion following the presentations. There are other seminars organised by the Departments on a regular basis which are open to all, including ECRs. Details are available from the ECR reps.
BSMS ECR Microsoft Teams channel
As many of us are now using a flexible hybrid working approach, we have created an ECR Microsoft Teams Channel to engage with our research community and create a social space for ECRs. This is an interactive space to share ideas, make suggestions and have a quick conversation with your peers. There’s also the opportunity to use the Teams channel to organize social events and meet up with other ECRs. It also contains helpful documents, presentations, forms etc such as information on induction, mentoring, training events, fellowships, teaching opportunities etc.
Appraisals
All ECRs should have an appraisal once a year. This will be performed by your line manager (usually your principal investigator). Please contact the ECR Lead if this does not happen for any reason. For further details on the appraisal process, see the Organisational Development webpage here >