Staff review and development (SRD) is a vital tool in helping you to manage your career development. It is a formal opportunity to sit down with your supervisor or line manager to discuss your current achievements and where you would like to be going with your career. Most importantly, it can help you find out how the Department can support you to achieve your goals. The outcomes of every SRD meeting are read by the Head of Department personally.

A properly functioning SRD system is widely recognised as ‘best practice’ in supporting postdocs to manage their own career progression. This principle is endorsed, for example, by the Concordat and by Athena SWAN.

Although the Department has an SRD system in place for postdocs (as well as for other members of staff), it’s fair to say that the application of this system has not been rigorous in recent years. In recognition of its importance to postdocs, PDAC is working closely with the Department to re-evaluate and improve the system to make it a valuable tool for the postdoc community. With the re-launch of the improved system, we will be asking for feedback from postdocs who have SRD meetings in the next few months to help assess how well it’s working.

SRD is important and is for your benefit, so it’s vital that the Department’s SRD system works well. Please support it, and please tell us, the Post-Doc committee, about your experiences, so that we can help to fine-tune the system for the future.