(S2E3) Retaining precariously employed research staff: a project at Edinburgh University

Intro: 00:00:00

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be? You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.

Tony: 00:00:25

My name's Tony Bromley. Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast. This is season two. Uh, in season two, we are talking to presenters from the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference in 2022. Uh, I'm delighted today I have, uh, Katie, Nicoll Baines with me. Um, 'The presentation title is Retaining Research Talent during Covid 19:

lessons Learned from the University of Edinburgh'. So, hello to you, Katie. Hi, nice to be here. Um, how are you? How are you today? Okay.

Katie: 00:01:00

Yeah, very well. Um, adjusting to the fact that the temperature has dropped, um, and it's very much feels like winter up here in Scotland. So it's,

Tony: 00:01:08

but it's always beautiful. I like the snow across Edinburgh. Is there anything more beautiful.

Katie: 00:01:12

Yes, we are lucky. And it's a beautiful sunny day today. It's just very crisp and sort of frosty already. And I feel like that shouldn't be allowed until at least October, September, possibly.

Tony: 00:01:22

And I was gonna, you know, I was gonna start by apologizing cause the first time we interacted, I got your name wrong and I missed the, uh, Nicoll bit.

And then when I just introduced you then I think I said Nicole, didn't I? I. I, Not Nicoll ,

Katie: 00:01:35

I will say, so I, yeah, I say Nicoll, um, kind of, um, I suppose sound, It sounds like the, the metal. Is, is what I usually say to people, but I mean, Nicole, people do see the C O L L and that is Cole in, in like, there's, there's an aisle of Cole in Scotland, which is how you'd say that.

Um, but yes, people getting my name wrong is, is kind of par for the course for me.

Tony: 00:02:00

I think you, you're being very kind to me. I appreciate that.

Katie: 00:02:03

I think I've, I've developed tools of sort of gently saying, um, and by the way, this is my name, . . Um, because I, I I, I think back to the time it happened, the most significant time it happened was for my undergraduate degree graduation.

Oh dear. And despite the fact that I was listed with all of the 'Ns', the person reading out the graduates names, just read out Katie Baines and I could feel my mother in the audience, seething cuz the Nichol is her name and, yeah. Oh, okay. Right. Oh dear. I was walking across the stage like, Oh no, she's gonna be furious.

At least it said the right thing on the certificate though. So .

Tony: 00:02:41

Excellent. Anyway, I, I better move on quickly. Um, right. Um, so. The podcast, Research Culture Uncovered. So we're talking about a number of, um, aspects of research culture, and particularly today when we're get into the questions, we're gonna get into one of the big areas, and that's a precarity of contracts, which is something that you've touched on, uh, in terms of your presentations.

Mm-hmm. . Um, so I just wanna start with, um, in your abstract, you mentioned funding from an EPSRC Inclusion Matters grant. So can you tell us a little bit more about your context and, and what you did with the funding.

Katie: 00:03:16

Yeah, absolutely. So we were awarded this Inclusion Matters Grant in towards the end of 2018. Um, and our project title was, um, 'Evidence Based Growing the Big Grant Club'. So we had a specific focus on access to large grant funding, um, and looking that more broadly, um, in the context of, of career progression for research scientists, um, in the engineering and physical sciences because the funding was EPSRC, that was our focus.

Um, I at the time was involved in the project as the project manager, um, and one of our research fellows did the early stage ethnographic research. Um, speaking with those involved in the system, both researchers themselves and those that create career development opportunities for researchers such as fellowship programs or leadership programs.

Um, and that gave us an understanding of how people experience that system and the kind of pinch points that they might be exposed to, um, as they're trying to progress and access these funding opportunities. Cause as we know, access to funding is a huge motivator in progressing somebody's career forwards and up the ladder.

ng at that generally and then: 2020

Tony 00:04:43

Yeah. Yeah, I remember, um, I'm just thinking about the applying for large grants. It was a few years ago I was speaking to somebody at Leeds and there was a particular grant had been announced and the details of how you applied for it, and they said that it, it meant that because of the, the nature of the details of what you had to have to apply, it was only about 10 people at Leeds that could apply for it.

So, I mean, you're experiencing that sort of thing and restriction itself just simply in the bullet points listed to what you need to apply.

Katie: 00:05:10

Absolutely. The messaging and even thinking about general grants around fellowships, there's this importance of messaging has a real impact and who thinks that they can apply.

Um, so my role now is I, I'm the equality diversity inclusion manager for the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network. So we're supporting the career development and leadership development of future leaders fellows from UKRI, but even just that phrase, 'future leaders fellows', might not be strictly relatable to all people thinking about perhaps going for something like that.

Yeah. I think seeing yourself as a future leader is a very specific thing. Um, and so I think we have to pay quite close attention to the impacts of the language used in the kind of funding calls and opportunities that are put out by funders. Yeah. Um, and the impact that that has on the diversity of people that apply.

Tony: 00:05:58

Yeah. And I, um, I was interested, you, you mentioned already about the qualitative, uh, interviews. Um, 'pinch points' that, uh, were identified. I was just interested what, so, so what were the sort of main pinch points that were identified from researchers?

Katie: 00:06:14

Yeah, so there were a number, um, of themes that were identified through, through the qualitative analysis. Um, and these included, um, navigating this sort of mid-career stage where things become a lot less clear, um, as to how you fit into the system and the associated support that's required. So that kind of linked to the opportunities that are created through mentoring and networks, um, and how there's a definite, sort of gendered element to that in terms of who you know and how those opportunities get created based on who you know. And so access to those opportunities is, is kind of gate keep, it's gate kept, um, if you will. Um, the, the concept of workload and, and the burden of additional responsibilities comes up a lot, and that can kind of force people into certain areas beyond just being able to apply for funding.

So if you're overburdened with teaching or, um, administrative support or pastoral support, which again, have some gendered and um, um, inequalities associated with it. , Um, the notion of caring responsibilities as well, which I think we're all familiar with being a constraint on somebody's career. Um, and this actually was shown, we spoke to both men and women.

Um, and there were kind of similar experiences across the board. I think how they then manifest and are perceived by the wider community does vary, um, in a slightly gendered way, but they are being experienced. Um, and then more broadly, kind of, imperceptible nature of the process itself. So the bias that might be happening at decision making stages, people not fully understanding what is happening at a panel, um, because they haven't had experience themselves being on a panel and all these sorts of things.

And so actually understanding and demystifying processes was something that we saw as an area we'd wanna unpack and, and make more transparent if we were able to, if we were wanting to shift the way the system operates, um, and is becomes more accessible to people.

Tony: 00:08:16

Yeah, it's interesting, just, I just picked up there, you mentioned, um, pastoral, um, care that people do because, um, I recently spoke to our keynote presenter from REDS conference, which is available in another, uh, podcast.

And, uh, Louise, uh, Owusu-Kwarteng and she mentioned, um, the gendered aspect of it. She also mentioned that how we value things, so I dunno if you found that sort of thing that people are doing a lot of things which are extremely valuable, but not valuable in terms of the criteria that people are putting together to progress or, Yeah.

Katie: 00:08:51

Yeah, absolutely. If we look at, you know, promotion requirements, even internally at university, there might be some small consideration of, you know, peer support, mentoring, tutoring, pastoral support for your students and your staff. But actually the still, the, still the big deciders as to whether or not you get that professorship or you get that promotion to reader

you know, you're at a different stage is still hugely contingent on publications and research grant income. Um, and so there's no more, there's, there isn't this holistic approach that ideally we should be promo, we should be promoting people based on all aspects that makes them a rounded leader, manager researcher, because actually, if you're capable of supporting the needs of your team very well, you're actually gonna ultimately probably do better research because they'll be more supported, they'll be able to perform better. Um, and so I think it's a, it's a shortsightedness in realizing how many different things contribute to a healthy working culture.

Yes. Um, and if we placed a more equitable degree of value on things like pastoral care, I think it's likely that we would see a shift in organizational culture towards a more inclusive and welcoming environment.

Tony: 00:10:02

Well, I was gonna come to the outcomes, uh, of the work that you did. Um, but just picking up on that, that last point, um, there, do you, do you recognize shifts perhaps in your own organization or perhaps more widely?

Katie: 00:10:15

So, um, in my piece, for the conference, I'm going to be talking specifically about, uh, an opportunity that we had that was created by Covid, actually. Um, so at, at, when we got to that point in 2020 and we just kind of got, got to the stage where we had understood these pinch points and we were starting to think how can we intervene in the system of the university.

Um, Edinburgh was awarded some funding by the Scottish Funding Council that was designed to retain talent to Edinburgh, um, and our Dean for Research created um, took the decision to create some chancellor's fellowships, which were these tenure track um, um, research positions for research staff at the university.

Um, and the decision was made that this would, they, they would aim for 50% women and 20% black and minority ethnic applicants awarded or candidates, um, within this scheme. And our team, because they knew the research we were doing and one of our Co-Is (co-investigator) on the Team ended up being involved in the organizing process and so we were able to make recommendations around understanding the bias in the decision making process.

We pushed for a consideration of unconscious bias observers, which is sort of like someone to champion and, and watch for unconscious bias in other people, um, as part of this recruitment. And ultimately we ended up with 80% women fellows and 19% black and minority ethnic fellows, which was a considerable achievement considering it was all entirely internal.

And Edinburgh University doesn't have the greatest diversity when it comes to, to ethnicity, specifically within its researcher pool already. So the fact that we were able to retain that many people and actually that many women, I think was quite a good, um, achievement. And then I went and spoke to people who had been part of this to understand how they'd navigated it.

So we have learning based on, um, this kind of I guess unique situation at Edinburgh that we can then share with others around how things worked well. This constant communication of putting these diversity targets on the agenda, people caring about retaining talent and and offsetting precarity. That was another key message was that we wanted to create these more secure jobs at the university and that we really value our researchers.

And so we had that opportunity effectively because of Covid, it might not have happened, um, in the same, in the same way. And we might not have had this opportunity to kind of apply our findings in such a real context. Yeah. Um, and, and yeah. So, um, it, it was, it was powerful to be part of, I think. I think.

Tony: 00:12:57

Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of just pulling things together in terms of what we, we've discussed, Yeah. Um, you have, by the sound of it exacted some change. So if you were to advise people or suggest to people what they may want to do within their own institutions and their own organizations, is there, is there any key points you might say that, Look, you need to do this, You need to do this. Cause we all have, we all have strategies and we all have agendas and then they don't always work.

Katie: 00:13:23

So something I haven't perhaps made it totally clear is how how comprehensive our approach to doing this research was from the outset. So the team that made up the original grant consisted of somebody from physics, someone from chemistry, someone from biology, someone from academic development and research development.

Um, and that then meant that we had this more comprehensive insight into the kind of cultures in the different areas of the university. We then built it out to ensure that we had lines of communication with people at those sort of organizational decision making areas. So the Research Deans in the different departments, but also human resources. Because policy around recruitment is the responsibility of HR.

Um, and so you can, you can persuade a Research Dean or a head of department, all you want to do things inclusively around recruitment. But if university policy doesn't say you have to do it, then there isn't necessarily the drivers there to make it happen. And so in this specific example around the Chancellor's Fellows recruitment, we were able to get in early, make recommendations to the human resources lead and then that was implemented through that structure that was already existing at the university.

And so I think a really key element of strategy around system change is understanding the different moving parts in your organization and how to use those to, to enact change. And now going beyond this recruitment, um, that happened specifically around retaining research talent, HR at the University of Edinburgh are also looking at their general recruitment policy to see if the kind of recommendations that worked in this instance are more applicable across the board when it comes to recruitment.

And so hopefully we'll see a degree of longevity around these interventions. Um, that maybe wouldn't happen if we were simply a research project happening in isolation that was just doing a study and, and sharing its findings. And so building those relationships from, from early on, part of our research was talking to HR, involving them in the research, having this co-production of, of the kinds of things that we might change because then you bring people along with you rather than having the sort of

potential conflict because if you, if your goal is to make change in a system, but you're doing it from a critical perspective where it feels like you're kind of telling someone they're doing something wrong, it can rub people up the wrong way for want of a better phrase. Yeah, absolutely. And so building those relationships, I think is really crucial so that you can actually be part of the conversation and it's a dialogue rather than an argument.

Yeah, not oversimplifying it too much.

Tony: 00:16:06

No. A dialogue is always gonna be better than, than an argument. And, and the other aspect that you, you talked about was the, the much bigger aspect and that we can't necessarily influence, and that's funders of research and changing their approaches. I mean, um, I I think they, the, there is evidence, there is some change in approaches.

I mean, he's, he's seen that evidence nationally perhaps?

Katie: 00:16:27

Um, so interestingly I had the opportunity towards the end of so sorry, towards the end of our research project in 2021 to do a secondment with EPSRC because they'd recognized how our project had worked quite well at Edinburgh and that we had the opportunity to support them looking at their survey qualitative data on a attitudes towards the inequalities in large grant funding.

Um, and that secondment enabled me to support them to develop some interventions at a funder level. Things that they need to be considering, um, around how to maybe shift, um, the, the situation around how funding is accessed. Um, recommendations sent around things like flexibility in grants, to do with timing and deadlines, um, and how they work relative to sort of key times within the year that are somewhat gendered, such as school holidays or, um, semester dates, people with different responsibilities and things like that.

Because we saw with the, with the. Take the example of the Covid rolling grants, because there was no specific deadline eventually they started to look very well evenly distributed, at least with respect to gender, um, differences. Um, and the other area, again, that came through very strongly from the data was this, this notion of bias and demystifying the peer review process at the funder level.

So the more, there are now these commitments from EPSRC and wider dialogue, as I understand it, um, within UKRI around how to make that process clearer. It's, it's definitely a thing that we try to promote within the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network to support our cohort with understanding opportunities around grant funding.

And so I think it's really just a matter of making that more joined up so that all those involved in accessing the funding system really truly understand it and also understand how they have an opportunity to tell funders maybe we could do this differently or try this a different way. Um, rather than seeing the funder as this sort of lofty entity that you can't really talk to.

Because if you talk to them, you're kind of cheating when actually it's not cheating to speak to the funder before you apply for something. It's perfectly valid to ask questions and try to understand better. But I think if you're the kind of person who doesn't feel like they're part of the system because they don't see themselves as a leader or they don't see people like them as leaders, then there's that kind of, not visible, but there is still a barrier to participation and access.

Um, that makes them think, Oh, I couldn't possibly speak to the funder. Why would I do that? Yeah. Whereas the funder is crying out for people to, they want to absolutely. And so we just have to break down all of these miscommunications, I think.

Tony: 00:19:05

Do you know, there's so many connections between what you are saying and are gonna recommend to people, to, to listen to professor, Owusu-Kwarteng's presentation as well as some real things that come together.

So, um, the other thing was, um, I'm trying to avoid acronyms. I don't think I've explained what EPSRC is yet, just in case somebody doesn't know it. So, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK, if anybody's from outside the UK wondering what that was. Um, I think we'll, We'll, we'll finish there.

Katie, thank you very much for talking about your presentation. It's been really great to, uh, listen to you, um, today. Thank you.

Katie: 00:19:39

Thank you for having me.

Intro: 00:19:44

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