Higher Education Career Barometer: Understanding Career Motivation in Higher Education
Recruiting, motivating and retaining talented staff, and encouraging both staff development and career progression, are key challenges for Higher Education Institutions. Roles within higher education are changing significantly and career paths are no longer clearly defined. Staff motivation is central to institutional achievement and it is therefore essential for staff expectations and experiences to be tracked over time.
This ongoing study allows universities not only to achieve the aforementioned objectives independently, but also has the unique benefit of giving a benchmark of staff perceptions against those employed at other institutions.
What is the benefit to your institution?
The Higher Education Career Barometer (HECB) was developed by i-graduate in consultation with The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE) and 26 higher education institutions across the UK. The study helps institutions to:
- Narrow the gap between career motivation and employer understanding;
- Attract, motivate and retain talented staff;
- Understand why staff join, stay and leave an institution (and the sector);
- Compare the staff experience to that at other institutions;
- Identify how perceptions vary across different groups of staff (e.g. academic/professional, international/domestic) and how this affects motivation, career aspirations and decisions;
- Track staff perceptions of careers and personal development;
- Develop and maintain staff development and career progression.
What are the advantages to your institution of using i-graduate to conduct the research?
- Staff surveys carried out independently can tell you what your staff really think - questionnaires are returned directly to us, ensuring greater confidence on the part of respondents, which will lead to greater honesty in answering questions and a higher response rate;
- Objectivity, experience in questionnaire design and access to dedicated resources when required. The HECB questionnaire has been developed with input from a wide range of institutions and sector experts;
- Benchmarking capability - we compare your institution's performance against a sector average (and sector grouping). Individual institution specific results will remain anonymous.
What do you receive?
- Example letter to staff and advice on how to maximise the response from your current staff database;
- Questionnaire design and construction, online hosting and response management;
- Data cleaning, formatting and data analysis;
- Comprehensive benchmarked PDF slide presentation - to ensure clarity of message and to optimise the ease of onward communication and dissemination;
- Anonymised open comments collected from the questionnaire - grouped, sorted and reported verbatim in a searchable format;
- Analysis by age, job role, gender, nationality and length of service within your institution - or alternative demographics;
- A 1 to 2 page written executive summary on findings for dissemination through your institution;
- A presentation of findings at your institution from a senior member of the i-graduate team.
New for 2010
- The international staff experience (and comparisons with UK staff)
- Staff/Student ratios and relationships
- Previous employment before current role (number of positions, sectors worked in etc.)
- Impact of, and relationship with, immediate line manager
- Sector benchmarks to compare your results to other institutions (e.g. Russell Group, 1994 Group etc.)
For further information or to register for the 2010 study, please contact Naomi at Naomi.Kenny@i-graduate.org