Talent Management

Yesterday lunchtime I went to the first "Registrar's Event", as part of the launch of our new talent management initiative for Professional Staff. It had about 100 attendees from all areas of professional services from a variety of grades and job areas, and began to explore how we can continue to develop a cohesive, flexible and values team of professional staff. It was acknowledged that behind every outstanding piece of research work which  reaches the national and international press,  every award the university  achieves, and every outstanding piece of teaching, there is a team of professional staff which make this possible. Our aim to to describe the Sheffield Professional, in the same way that we do the Sheffield Academic and the Sheffield Graduate.

It was a good event, lots of networking, opportunities to meet new people, speed dating, spot prizes, and a very uplifting and stimulating talk from the Registrar.  As part of the discussion, attendees were asked to identify the One Big Question. What would they like answered, and my favourite was "what does the Registrar actually do?  I've been asked the same question myself (about me, not him), and that's how this blog started. More to come - watch this space.

Today I've been in the UEB Information Services sub group - a small group who discuss items which might be relevant to our Executive Board. One of the main items from CiCS we discussed today was Information Security, especially in relation to mobile devices. User education is as critical as policies and technical solutions, and we are rolling out an on-line training/awareness programme which we have piloted in one faculty and are about to implement in CiCS.  Our discussion today was how to implement it across the University, and how much should be mandatory.

The other main discussion we had was around open access publishing of research journals. Suffice to say, it's complex!