Our Staff

Our Vision for Our Staff

To work together as a confident team, valuing excellence, partnership, commitment, professional development and leadership throughout our organisation

The University is committed through a number of initiatives to ensuring equality of opportunity for all our staff, irrespective of gender. For more information on our progress on the issue of gender equality please visit: www.nuigalway.ie/genderequality

We Will

Skills and Capacity

• Continue to attract the highest calibre of academic and support staff
• Invest in the skills, systems and knowledge needed to sustain an excellent and diverse team
• Provide effective training and development programmes for support staff, and encourage them to gain a diversity of experiences across the University, in order to create greater promotional and redeployment opportunities
• Develop current and prospective leaders who will have a focus on effective management, collegiality, teamwork and the University’s mission
• Continue to affirm the positive relationship between retired staff and the University, recognising the valuable contribution many make to the campus community

Organisational Structures

• Consolidate and refine existing academic and research structures and associated processes
• Ensure that Heads of Schools enable academic staff to achieve an appropriate balance between teaching, research, and contribution to the institution and community
• Ensure managers of support services regularly review staffing plans, in order to rebalance the staff profile as appropriate
• Continue to restructure our services into larger, more flexible and effective units, for the maximum benefit of users and providers
• Create more opportunities for recruitment at senior grades in the support services, resulting in an appropriate rebalancing of grade profile

Systems and Processes

• Use effective internal communications to ensure that our staff have a shared understanding of, and commitment to, our mission
• Maximise our staff’s contribution by combining effort through sectoral efficiencies, shared services, and better use of external suppliers
• Continue to provide staff with a positive and safe work environment
• Regularly measure staff satisfaction through the Staff Survey, and identify key actions for improvement, where appropriate

Measures of Success

• Staff training and development audit completed by the end of 2015, with continuing annual monitoring over the course of this Plan
• Use of effective leadership training programmes to produce a broader cohort of staff who are ready for leadership roles across the University
• Transformed organisational culture of gender equality
• Embedded competency frameworks to support recruitment, workload modelling, promotion schemes and PMDS
• 100% implementation of PMDS across all staff
• Revised structures in place to integrate Research Institutes, Colleges and Schools
• Increased number of support staff moving from junior to senior levels, and from generalist to professional posts
• Athena SWAN award achieved – recognising good employment practice for women working in higher education science and research
• High-impact investment programme in ICT systems
• Newly developed online staff portal that is responsive to staff use and needs
• Tracked increases in staff satisfaction over the lifetime of the Plan
• Improved induction process for new staff, including an effective suite of printed and online resources, and commitment to identifying Induction Mentors at unit level
• Enhanced communications with retired staff, including news, events and opportunities for engagement