Using ARMA Qualifications to build value from performance reviews

In this short article for Directors, Heads of Office and Senior Managers leading research support operations, Hamish Macandrew explains how ARMA’s Qualifications programme could be used as a useful tool to bring more meaning to, and greater satisfaction from the annual team PDRs…

When do you carry out your performance and development reviews? This year’s probably a bit different, like last year, but for most Research Offices, the work is still coming in. Research colleagues are still applying for grant funding, at least some projects are managing to keep going, and knowledge exchange activity is still forging ahead.

And, after a few false dawns, we are now starting to see real green shoots of recovery. Some sense of normality is gradually starting to return, and those performance reviews will once again return to the top of the pile!

 But they’re not that easy to do, are they? Because everyone’s different, people have different levels of knowledge, different levels of ambition, and they’re probably all doing slightly different jobs…

So how do you put some meaningful structure around all this? How do you find out what your people really know and how up-to-date their knowledge is? No point in spending money on training they don’t need, after all. And, if you’re not from a research management background, how do you determine what knowledge your people will need, so that you know that they will be properly equipped to work alongside, and provide excellent advice to, your outstanding academics in the role of partner?  So that you can deploy them flexibly, promote them into roles they’d love and you know they’d flourish in, and keep them motivated by expanding their knowledge in a structured manner. Knowledge which is going to come from some of the most outstanding research management professionals in the UK. Not people from your university, where there might be institutional group-think, but people from other institutions, who are themselves connected across the UK and further afield and who can share the latest and best practice. Imagine if you could validate all this, objectively, and provide your people with evidence of their prior and new learning. And a real Qualification.

Welcome to The ARMA Certificate in Research Management.

Accreditation of Prior and New Knowledge. Training, coaching and resources. Detailed assessment of assignments. At Foundation and Advanced Levels. Offering face-to-face and online formats.

Bookings for our new cohort starting this November now open. Details at: https://arma.ac.uk/qualifications/