Abstract

With this contribution we will present the strategy and its changes over the last 13 years of knowledge transfer and onboarding process for the newly recruited research administrators (RA) at the Faculty of Sciences Technology and Medicine (FSTM) at the University of Luxembourg.

There are mainly three types of challenges related to the training and onboarding of new RAs:

i) Role complexity: the role includes grant writing, financial management and administrative aspects. Moreover, At the FSTM, RAs cover the project’s lifespan: including pre and post award tasks, and all other administrative aspects such as contracts & open science.

ii) Huge component of people management skills. In practice, we are their coaches and their trusted people. At the same time, we need to have “people skills” and assertiveness, while also being able to know when to detach from the project.

iii) We have observed that most of the newly recruited team members have a PhD degree and their experience in administration was limited. This is in line with the results of the RAAAP survey analyzed by Kerridge and Scott (2018) showing that most RAs have a university degree
(masters/PhD). Having work experience in the academic sector as a researcher is an advantage for RAs. Former researchers may understand for instance how research funding is working and what are the funding schemes available. However, switching from the academic to an administrative function is not trivial. Indeed, working in the administration to support researchers requires different skillset.

Over the years, the onboarding and training strategy in our team has experienced different stages. Since the creation of the team, from 2010 until 2019, the training was one-on-one, following the shadowing scheme and profiting from the small group size (2 to 4 members) and less complexity of the work (fewer grant schemes, smaller University). No additional support material was prepared, such as standard operating procedures (SOPs), guidelines, workflows, and processes related to research management (RM). All knowledge remained within each member’s memory.

In the last few years, the team experienced growth and new challenges: more complexity in RM and higher workload. New onboarding strategies have been tested since late 2010s.

We will present the strategies and materials tested and the effort to combine different training methodologies to accommodate each person’s learning preferences. We took into consideration the learning styles of the VARK inventory (visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic).

List of onboarding actions: Shadowing, onboarding brochure, RAs’ hotline, informal exchanges & tailor-made meetings (face to face) on specific topics with colleagues.

To sum up, we have observed that effective onboarding and knowledge transfer are essential for maintaining research continuity, ensuring project success, and fostering a smooth transition in RM positions. These processes should be tailored to the specific needs and culture of the organization and should promote collaboration and knowledge sharing among team members including more visual materials (i.e. videos) and people management tutorials

In our experience, adapting the resources to the individual learning style through assessments and feedback discussions has a very positive impact on the learning experience and outcomes.