Developing yourself
Before you start looking for training courses or hurrying to take up a development opportunity, it's helpful to spend some time reflecting on your current skills, attributes, strengths and areas you would like to improve on, and use these as a basis for planning your personal and professional development. The University provides online tools, templates and guidance that can help you do this.
The Staff Review and Development process is a useful mechanism for reviewing your skills and aspirations with your manager and planning your personal and professional development.
The Career Pathways Project offers a range of tools focused on specific job families, including a skills framework against which you can measure your current skills and compare them to those needed for your current role or the next role you are aspiring to. Skills frameworks are currently available for the following job families: Administrators; Departmental/Faculty Library; Mechanical Workshop Technicians.
For broad ranging career planning guidance; the Planning your Career web pages provide a range of generic tools, templates and guidance to help you with your career development whatever stage you are at.
Once you have assessed your current skills and attributes and identified the areas in which you would like to undertake some development, you can plan your development activity using the Personal Development Plan template, and look for appropriate courses or development opportunities from the University's various Training Providers.
The Learning Options within Career Pathways also offer a range of suggestions for development activities.
Finally, when you complete any development activity it is important to record it, reflect on what you have learned from it and how you are going to apply that in the work place. The Learning Log template and guidance supports this reflection process.
Additional support is available for assistant staff undertaking vocational qualifications.
If you would like any further support in this area, please contact us.