Summary

Young academic staff are often struggling with the overwhelming amount of new work and new roles, mostly due to the large difference between the responsibilities of a PDRA (Postdoctoral Research Associate) and an Assistant Professor. Unfortunately, there is very little support to provide them with tools to cope at this very crucial point of transition. The result is a non-sustainable working approach, often resulting in an unhealthy work-life balance and burnouts. Consequently, they become frustrated, demotivated, and often disillusioned with their academic work. Moreover, as young leaders, they will propagate the same toxic and unhealthy working culture onto their own group and students.

This pilot will establish a new and structured approach to help recently joined academic staff to acquire healthy productivity habits. Over the course of 5 months, we will introduce them to modern productivity tools, teach them a sustainable approach to working, and guide them through a systematic approach to establish healthy and sustainable working habits. A detailed schedule can be found further down. The success will be measured through questionnaires (at the start, right after the end of the project, and 6/12 months after that to measure long-lasting effects). Questionnaires are designed to assess the current state of productivity, level of confidence and happiness, and to retrieve feedback.

Funded by Research England:

Implementation:

• Feb. 1st: Call for participants. To achieve high level of commitment a formal application is required. Eligible are recently joined (since Sep 2021) or soon the be joining Assistant Professors/Lecturers.

• Feb. 24th (Friday / noon): Application deadline: decision communicated on Feb 28th. Maximum cohort number is 20. First questionnaire was sent out to assess state of productivity before the project.

• Mar. 20th (Monday): Full day workshop at Engineers House.

  • Morning: session is based on the PI’s (Helmut Hauser) highly successful workshop on productivity for academics, which has been provided since 2016 at UoB on a regular basis (e.g., within the CREATE framework to obtain the HE Fellowship, Bristol Clear, GW4 Crucibles, to various CDTs, and Heilbronn Fellows).

  • Afternoon: cohort building, establish accountability buddy groups (3-4 people), individual goal setting.

• Mar. 21th – Mar. 31st: 2 week - trial phase: Guided by the PI, participants can test different tools from the workshop that work best for their personal situation. At the end each participant has to commit to one structure (small set of habits that they want to acquire) for the next 12 weeks.

• April 17th - July 7th:  Focused habit acquisition phase: Participants follow their agreed structure for 12 weeks. Supported through accountability buddies, online success tracking, online discussion group, and 2 mandatory group meetings (after 1 week (April 24th, 1-3 PM) / at half-time (June 5th, 1-3 PM).

• July 10th (Monday): Half-day Workshop at Engineers House: Reflection on learned experience, identification of next steps

• July 14th (Friday): Celebration dinner (Evening Event). Participants will receive certificates and individual milestones will be celebrated in the context of a social dinner

• July 20th: 2nd questionnaire to measured improvement and to received feedback.

• Project finished with July, however, we followed-up with questionnaires to measured the long-lasting effects of this approach and to receive feedback (after 6 and 12 months)