Appendix APC 1/02 (03/04)

Notes of Contract Research Staff Working Group Meeting

Monday 7th April 2003

Present:Sarah Brant

Bob Carey, Secretary

Dave Delpy, Chair

Brian Martin

Tessa Parsons

  1. Apologies for absence

Apologies for absence were received from Ian Eames, Marilyn Gallyer, Peter Rich and Mike Spyer.

  1. Minutes of last meeting on 23rd September 2002

The Group accepted the notes of the last meeting, which were signed by the Chair.

  1. Contract Research Online Survey (CROS)

Bob Careysummarised some of the main findings from his report on the UCL CROS survey 2003 (circulated to the Working Group prior to the meeting). The Group agreed that a shortened version of the report should be placed on the web for staff to view, and that PIs should also be made aware of the content.

Action : Bob Carey to prepare an abridged version of the report to place on the web, and for circulation to Heads of Departments, for dissemination to relevant academic and research staff.

  1. CRS Career Management Scheme / Staff Review

Bob Carey confirmed that the new Staff Review Scheme would be extended to cover CRS. He also confirmed that the CRS Career Management Scheme booklet would need to be reviewed again once the planned UCL implementation of the Fixed Term Worker Regulations had been clarified.

Action: Bob Carey to arrange to amend the Staff Review Scheme to include CRS, and to arrange for this information to be disseminated to Heads of Departments and other relevant academic and research staff.

  1. Fixed Term Worker Regulations / contracts of employment

Sarah Brant explained that UCL will be moving to open-ended contracts for research staff. She added that how this would be implemented and administered had still to be confirmed, and that an announcement would be made in due course. It was agreed by the group that it would be a very positive step to be able to clarify the detail at an early stage as a number of other HEIs have already done so e.g. ReadingUniversity.

  1. Mandatory training of PIs – update on training take-up

Judith Taylor was unable to attend the meeting, but had confirmed that 31 participants had completed the Leading and Managing Research Teams Module on Managing Contract Researchers over the last three academic years. The only separate PI workshop was held in 2001 and was attended by 11 participants.

The Group discussed the difficulty of targeting PIs, and Sarah Brant agreed that Finance/MSD should be contacted again to see if they have a PI email contact list (which ResearchAdministrationhave confirmed to Bob, they do not have). Once a clear method of communication has been defined, Dave Delpy will draft an email to be sent to PIs about management training courses.

Action: Sarah Brant / Bob Carey to liaise with Finance to clarify whether a reliable PI email list exists or can be developed.

  1. CRS Leaving Destination figures

Reports were circulated for the year 1st January-31st December 2002 (by department and faculty). It was agreed that this should be reviewed and discussed at the next meeting.

  1. Careers Service publicity

An update from Sue Dirmikis from the Careers Service was circulated with the agenda. This set out what work is being taken forward for research staff, how this is publicised and the take-up rate. Bob Carey noted that a CRS Careers Forum had been arranged for 14th April 2003.

  1. Open meeting for CRS, 19th May

Tessa Parsons explained that this meeting had been arranged by the AUT, although it was intended to be a forum for CRS rather than anactual AUT meeting. Ian Gibson will be speaking at the meeting. Tessa explained that at the meeting, CRS would be invited to put themselves forward for the CRS representative roles on the CRS Working Group. She confirmed that both she and Ian Eames would be stepping down from their roles.

Dave Delpy commented that Tessa had been a great asset to the Group and it had been useful from time to time that she was able to comment on issues not only from a CRS angle, but also from an AUT perspective. He added however, that although it may be helpful for the future CRS representatives to be an active AUT member, he was not of the view that one CRS representative should be anAUT nominee. The two representatives were for CRS staff to appoint.

  1. CRS website update

Tessa Parsons reported that no work had been undertaken on this as yet. Sarah Brant commented that it may be possible, if there was slippage on other projects, that a case could be made to find money within the HR Strategy, to pay for someone to be employed temporarily to set up a CRS webpage.

Action: Bob Carey and Tessa Parsons to put together a plan for a UCL CRS webpage.

  1. Any other business

There was no further business.

  1. Date of next meeting

To be arranged for September 2003.