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 you 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).
You have a legal right to request time off for training, and the University has a policy to cover this. However, most staff find 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 to find out more about the training budget for your department.
We also offer staff discount for 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. You will find more detail 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 do
As a result, participants need to be in a management position to attend a course suitable for managers.
Any course for managers is designed for staff who are currently in managerial roles. 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 additional services across the University which can help support your development.
Find out more one our staff learning and development web pages.