NDPCHS - Part time worker project, and PDR reinvigoration
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS) Athena Swan Champion Sue Ziebland says:
This year the NDPCHS marks ten years of our Athena SWAN journey. I think that we have particularly benefitted from
- our early decision that our Better Workplace initiatives should involve everyone and could focus on issues that affect anyone
- the recognition that we needed to share news of our EDI successes with the whole department
- our robust mixed methods approach to understanding the issues and to avoiding surprises by monitoring the data regularly. This approach (and committed, imaginative colleagues) has helped us to maintain momentum, keep on track, and (hopefully!) provided the grounding and evidence of sustained good practice for our current application for a Gold award.
Part time working project
In the 2018 staff survey we saw that 39% of respondents felt working part-time hindered career progression. Yet the department believes strongly that balancing part-time work with other responsibilities, like supporting a family, shouldn’t be a barrier to career progression for anyone, and the department aims to encourage and support all staff to thrive in their careers and progress to senior positions.
In 2019 they developed a new set of guidelines for managers and staff to support this goal and collated and shared the experiences of others in the department who work part-time. During this period, we have seen 38 staff promoted, 29% of whom work part-time. We have also seen 30 staff awarded the title of university research lecturer, associate professor or professor and 23% of these were part-time workers.
PDR Project
In the 2018 staff survey, while 93% of respondents found PDR useful only 61% reported having one in the last two years. The department aim is for everyone to have the opportunity to have an annual PDR with their line manager.
To improve the uptake of PDRs in the department, in 2018 NDPCHS launched a PDR awareness month with improved guidance and training to try to break down some of the barriers to completing a PDR and improve their quality. In 2020 the senior management committee wrote statements of commitment reflecting on why PDRs are important to them and their team.
They are currently moving our PDRs onto an online system to encourage completion and improve the accuracy of reporting while reducing the administrative burden of completing the process
Click here to read about EDI activity in one of our other 16 departments: