The University of Birmingham Concordat Action Plan

Environment and Culture

1. Awareness and engagement

• Create the Birmingham Academic Hub to provide access to the Concordat, relevant policies and process, training development and opportunities. 
• Produce and implement an annual communications plan to promote activities and build ECF community. This may include pulse survey questions of ECF
• Local college early career groups report on Concordat activities to local senior leadership annually. 
• Local research / early career environment reviews to be carried out (in addition to CEDARS), reported locally and to ECDA to inform University Executive Board (UEB) updates.
• ECDA reports annually to UEB on Concordat action plan, ECF development and environment.  
• Analyse early career population data from the  internal staff survey to evaluate and inform our ongoing Concordat commitment

2. Wellbeing and mental health

• Colleges implement local mental health and wellbeing actions e.g. Mental Health First Aid in the College of Medical and Dental Sciences (MDS)
• Evaluate existing local well-being initiatives e.g . The college of Social Sciences (CoSS) Wellbeing Bandit with respect to ECFs

 3. Bullying and harassment

• Implement a confidential reporting mechanism

People management

• Create a "lens" on the Managing People Toolkit that provides contextualised guidance on meeting the management expectations in the academic context, specifically when managing ECF. E.g. the requirement for career-focused conversations, facilitating access to 12 days CPD, well-being & ED&I responsibilities
• ECDA support People and Organisational Development (POD) to engage the Academic community in the Managing People Toolkit (MPT). Develop an engagement plan and monitor usage.  
• The New Academic Development Programme (ADP) includes mandatory Team Leader Programme 
• Carry out focus groups of managers of ECF staff to establish what specific management topics they would most value support in, and how this would be best delivered 
• Following focus groups, design & deliver 3 most useful interventions by the end 2023
• Develop & propose updated PDR guidance for those with ECF management responsibilities and for ECFs to take personal responsibility 
• All POD leadership programmes to include specific units on Inclusive Leadership & Psychological Safety 
• Academic Hub includes "Academic Manager" section that describes and provides guidance on relevant responsibilities and expectations

1. Championing professional development

• Implement Core Learn module to monitor / report on learning & compliance activity. ECDA engage with Core developers to ensure interests of ECFs & Concordat represented
• Define CPD in relation to 12 days allowance
• All local and central development activities recorded in Core Learn
• Local college early career groups report ECF Learning and Development (L&D) engagement to local leadership & ECDA bi-annually
• Local college early career groups carry out annual ECF L&D evaluation & needs analysis and deliver associated L&D activity during subsequent year
• Academic Hub collates and directs ECFs to all relevant learning & development activities
• Evaluate College research staff  mentoring schemes - if appropriate identify roll-out targets for future action plans.

2. Career development support and planning 

• Recruit ECF specific Careers Adviser
• Provide career planning / CPD record mechanism/template for ECFs

3. Research identity and leadership 

• ECFs will remain a key audience for the Academic Team Leader programme as it transitions into a required module for ADP
• Include activities to develop research identity and leadership skills in definition of CPD to be developed