What you are entitled to

Time

All staff are encouraged to undertake learning and professional development throughout their time at the University.

There is no set number of days or hours that each staff member should be engaged in training and development, as it varies with role and time. However, most full-time employees should expect to spend several days each year in learning and development activity (which is not limited to formal classroom-based courses).

There is a legal right to request time off for training, and the University has a policy to cover this, but most staff find that they are able to negotiate with their line manager for appropriate time away from their workplace to undergo training, without using the formal procedure.

Funding

Departments are required to allocate training budgets for funding courses and other professional development; speak to your line manager about the situation in your department.

The University also offers discount for staff undertaking some University programmes.

Eligibility: role suitability for programmes and courses

The Staff Development programmes and courses are designed to meet the needs of the intended audience who are detailed on each course page.

For example, courses suitable for managers are designed:

• to be pragmatic and enable managers to make sense of their role and gain immediate feedback by practising tools and techniques in work-based leadership tasks

• with a particular level of manager in mind such as the size of their team, their responsibilities and the balance of strategic and operational tasks they are required to undertake

As a result, participants need to be in a management position to attend a course suitable for managers.

A course for managers is designed for staff who are currently in managerial roles. They are not designed as theoretical experiences which staff may apply at some point in the future.

We cannot make exceptions to the audience criteria.

Services across the University to support your development

In addition to the support available through the Workforce Development team, there are various services across the University to support your development.

These are summarised on the Staff learning and development webpage.