Technical Staff and Knowledge Exchange

TALENT is a project which leads and influences change to advance status and opportunity for technical skills, roles and careers in UK higher education and research. It is led by the Midlands Innovation (MI) consortium of eight universities in collaboration with key stakeholder and industry partners. It is the largest ever investment into technicians in higher education, whose specialist skills often go unrecognised despite the crucial role they play in the success of universities and the growth of the UK economy. 

Research Consulting was commissioned to produce a report to define and explain the role of technical staff in contributing to knowledge exchange in university environments. To do this, Research Consulting undertook interviews with 15 stakeholders, and a focus group with a further 8 stakeholders from a variety of UK universities. A number of case studies were gleaned from the interviews and outlined. 

A key challenge from this work was to make more explicit the role and contribution of technical staff across UK universities towards knowledge exchange. It was found that this needs to be done both internally within technical staff communities, and externally in order to support the future recruitment of a staff group who are critical to the successful operation of universities.  

Technical staff contributions are rarely visible and not highly recognised. As such, recommendations were put forward to address this challenge, and encourage good continuing practice.  These included recruiting technical staff for leadership roles on University KE boards, explicitly recognising the contribution and value of technical staff, re-examine action plans for the Technician Commitment and KE Concordat, improve career development by understanding how KE skills may augment the talents of technical staff and widen the way that KE is communicated as a whole.