The Technician Survey

The National Technician Development Centre (NTDC), funded by HEFCE and the University of Sheffield, was launched in 2017. The Centre aims to enhance the excellence and efficiency of the technical workforce in Higher Education (HE) and address the growing skills gap which threatens our future success in high priority subject areas.

The NTDC Technician Survey is a comprehensive workforce-planning research tool, designed to help HEIs capture relevant information needed to support workforce planning. It is designed to enable each HEI to capture intelligence to understand their technical workforce, and for the NTDC to understand the sector technical workforce on a wider scale. The survey captures information related to technician roles across an institution.

Colleagues at the University of Essex have worked closely with NTDC staff to develop this version of the survey.

The findings of this survey, and resulting feedback, will be used to inform future versions of the tool.

Every participant will also have the opportunity to download a copy of their responses to aid future development.

The Centre aims to help HEIs address the skills gap in a number of ways, including the use of the Technician Skills, Roles and Responsibilities Audit, which includes this survey.

As technical staff, supporting highly specialised and diverse disciplines, we hold a vast array of technical skills. Whilst we have a good understanding of the skills that we currently use to deliver support to teaching and research at the University, it would take us some time to document and demonstrate such an extensive repertoire of capabilities. In addition, many of us have additional skills that we have acquired, sometimes from working elsewhere, or in working in different roles at the University. These skills may not currently be in use and therefore may not be apparent but are just as important when considering the extensive skills sets that we hold. This survey will enable us to collect, document and understand the full skills profile of the Technical Staff team. The survey also collects information on those skills that we as technicians would like to acquire. Having such information will be extremely useful when we are considering training and development, succession planning and when developing new opportunities for current staff members.

We are inviting all technical staff at the University to complete the survey, including staff in professional service sections and academic departments.

The survey will ask questions related to your role as a technician, your areas of responsibility, and the technical skills and techniques you commonly use in your job.

Your responses to the survey will be held confidentially and securely, aligned with data protection guidelines and 2018 Data Protection Act legislation, by the NTDC team. The data will be analysed to evaluate this version of the survey. All project reporting by the NTDC will be done using anonymised data. This will allow us to further understand the technical sector skills gaps at a national level.

Survey responses will be securely stored by the University of Essex for 12 months, in line with our Data Protection Policy. Access to individual responses will be restricted to the Technician Commitment Leads for analysis. Anonymised data will be shared with managers to be used for strategic planning and supporting the Technician Commitment aims.

The survey and all responses will be housed on Qualtrics, a well-respected online survey platform. To read about Qualtrics and their data storage policies please visit this link https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/platform/gdpr.

Once your survey response has been completed you will be able to download a Personal Report - a copy of your responses which we recommend you keep to be used as part of your professional development.

A University-wide anonymous report will also be available to demonstrate the in-house skills that are available. This will inform discussions around identifying skills gaps, training and development opportunities, succession planning, and discussions when researchers are considering buying out technician time from academic departments for grant applications and contracts.

As stated above, you will have the chance to spend time recording your skills and reflecting on your role. You will then receive a copy of your responses which you may find useful for your own personal career development. The goal of this work is to have a positive impact on the career development and progression of all technical staff in higher education. Your feedback will help us ensure that this is achieved.

The survey should take approximately 40-60 minutes of your time. Once you have started the survey you can return to it at any time using your original link. This will allow you to complete the survey in more than one sitting.

Due to the structure of the survey, there will not be a progress bar demonstrating how far you are through the survey. A progress bar showing you the percentage of questions you have completed would be inaccurate due to the fact that, due to the selections you make during the survey, you will not go through every question.

Yes. The survey is accessed through Qualtrics, which is available online anywhere.

Until 15th December 2023.

This survey constitutes a service evaluation for technical staff at the University of Essex. Any data used outside of Professional Services will be anonymised and Research Ethics Committee review, either at Function or University level is not required.

Please see ‘What will happen with my responses?’ above for an outline of what will happen with the data collected in this survey.