Pilot Technician Mentoring Scheme Goes National

This is the technician commitment podcast. A podcast sharing stories, ideas, and opportunities from the technician commitment community. Driving change together.

I'm Charlie Corkerin, lead animal care technician at the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Sterling.

My name is Michael Bis. I am the senior IT and AV technician within the school of histories, languages and cultures at the University of Liverpool. This podcast is created by the sector for the sector.

Welcome to today's episode. or exploring the cross institutional mentoring scheme for technicians team a mentoring initiative created by technicians for technicians. Now in its third year the program offers a unique opportunity for technicians to receive mentoring from someone who truly understands their role whilst also giving experienced professionals the chance to support and develop others in the community. In this episode, we're joined by the three organizing members behind the scheme. We'll be talking about what mentoring really means, why the programme was created, what technicians can expect if they take part as mentors or mentees, and the impact it's already having across our sector. And we'll also cover how you can get involved if you're interested in applying. Welcome to our guests, Thea, Trevor, and Lisa. Can we start by asking you to introduce yourselves and your role and your institution and then we'll jump into questions?

Lisa, I'll start with you first. Hi. Um, my name is Lisa Beda and I work at the University of Leicester. Um, I work as a lead teaching technician and I'm currently supporting students within the College of Life Sciences. Uh, Thea, now you please. Uh, hi, my name is Thea Mangles. I work at the University of Warick. uh when we um started the scheme, I was a technical services manager in chemistry and I have since transitioned into the program team for the faculty of science, engineering and medicine and I'm working as the technical services lead on a huge building program. And finally, but last but not least, Trevor. Hi, I'm Trevor Hardy. I'm the senior laboratory technician for the school of chemistry at Birmingham University. Amazing. Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us um on this episode. So um Thea then for the benefit of listeners who might be hearing about it for the first time, what is the cross institution mentoring scheme for technicians? Yeah. Um Mike's already stolen some of my thunder. So he's um as he mentioned it's a technicianled initiative. We're um it's run by technicians and it's for technicians. It's a national cross institutional scheme. Um and we are on our third cohort. We've so far helped about 60 more than that 60 um mentoring pairings and um the idea is that we cast our net wider for finding support for technicians to benefit from the experience of people who have um are either more senior or have more experience in the subject area that they're looking for. So, um that allows people to speak more openly and get new perspectives and um it really benefits both sides because mentees get the advice, perspective and confidence that they're looking for and uh our mentors tell us that they're developing leadership skills and confidence.

It's great and it sounds it's very unique as well because you're getting advice as the mentee from somebody who understands the technical roles that you're doing is sometimes it can be quite difficult to be part of these mentoring schemes and and you're being mentored by someone who just hasn't got any experience in the role that you've got. Exactly. um we we find that our mentors really understand the realities of the technical roles and um they just tend to be very different from academic or admin career structures. It's a win-win really, isn't it? It literally is a win-win. It is. Yeah, it is. And on top of everything else, we found that it seems to have uh a benefit that we really didn't set out to create actively. It's a community building tool as in we find that quite a lot of the um mentoring pairs stay in contact and have somebody to fall back on even if it's uh with questions that they that doesn't don't strictly have anything to do with their mentoring goals. Yeah. I I think from mine and Charlie's perspective, I think on the same we we help each other out constantly with podcasting and audio recordings and we throw questions at each other and then there's the other side of our conversation where we just talk about our children or the day we're having or things breaking. So I think we don't mentor but we have somewhat mentored and we haven't even thought about it. I think it just comes sometimes a second nature with people working within the Exactly. Going on to what is mentoring? Trevor, I'm going to throw that to you. What is mentoring? And can you tell us in one sentence how it helps your career? I know it might be a tricky one sentence. It's quite hard to sort of fulfill. So mentoring is mentoring allows a more experienced um mentor to share their knowledge, their skills, information, advice, perspective with a less experienced mentee. Um the reason why it works so well is because it it's personalized to the needs of the mentee. Um so the menty the mentees that contact us they request mentoring in a very particular area. um whether that's where they're going in their career or they need they need to learn a particular technique and we find mentors that have the skills the in you know the knowledge the experience to be able to guide them and instruct them in that specific skill uh career path whatever they're looking for.

That's great. Thank you. And so why the cross institutional mentoring scheme? Why was that set up? What was the the goal there? Um it came out of um group work from a collaborative leadership course that the three of us were on and quite a few people have a lot of institutions have their own mentoring schemes internally. But for a technician, you're not guaranteed to be put with somebody who's technical. Um, and even if you are, they you they're very it's very unlikely that they will have the skills and experience that you require for your mentoring. Um, we technicians are very specialized in what we do and universities do not have two or three technicians all with the same specialism. there's just not the money at universities to do that. So we had the idea that actually you go to another institution there is in my case there will be a you know senior laboratory technician at Warrick there will be one at Leicester Nottingham and you widen out that search across every institution in the UK. you will find those mentors who have the skills and the experience and the knowledge to be able to give the specialist um mentoring that you technicians require. Um do trying to do just within a single institution it just doesn't work because the skills and knowledge isn't there. I think it's a great idea. It's very it's difficult to make those connections yourself. So having something like your scheme behind you to to help you make those connections is brilliant. It's amazing.

Like I 100% agree what Charlie said because it things I never I never knew about it and this sounds really dapper from the host. I did I've never heard about the scheme at all and it is just it opens up your eyes um to larger networking to more technicians to actually talk to other technicians and to get that drive to be like actually well they're doing this person you know Nottingham Leicester Sterling you know the people are doing these this role that's similar to mine or the same as mine and I can learn from them or I can take some experiences from them. Um, I just think it's it sounds so fantastic and such a an insight. I really want to look more into it and and do more with it. Um, but what can technicians expect when they participate in the program as mentors and mentees? And I'm aiming this one at Lisa because she's being a bit quiet in the background.

So Lisa, what can we expect from our participants? Um so what we can expect um hopefully a very uh flexible and supportive scheme that can fit around technicians um working lives and their personal lives because technicians are so busy doing a variety of tasks. We have really dynamic roles. We have to drop everything at the last minute to go fight fires. Sometimes are ill, sometimes not. But it um they can be busy working lives and we need to have um a pairing who understands that. So most mentoring pairs u they meet online just because of the nature of having people up and down the country. So they mostly meet for an hour every um 4 to 6 weeks and the relationships run every relationships run for around 6 months but as Pia said earlier many of the pairings do stay in touch much longer after the mentoring journeys end um which we find out when we do our evaluations which is really lovely. we find that they're still meeting up and they've become part of their network. So, they're contacting them for reasons beyond their original um mentoring journeys and they're just becoming um somebody they talk to for advice, which is lovely. So, at the moment, our applications are open, which is a really exciting time for us. So, we have a a weekly meeting every two weeks and we'll talk about um when the results are coming in, about how many applications we've got. It's quite it's quite exciting for us at the moment. And then once the window closes, uh Fiona Paul who's um part of the ITSS and she runs the administration side for us, she'll bring all the information together for us and um then the Trevor and I will spend some time individually and we'll read through all the applications and um we'll start by making any kind of straightforward matches in the weeks leading up to matching day. So um matching day is is a really exciting day for us. Already talking about it now. Um, and we rotate it between our institutions of where we host it because we come together for this day and we don't meet up too much uh throughout the year even though we're not geographically that dissimilar. Um, Trevors of Birmingham and Beers at Warick, but we do meet up once or twice a year and we always meet up for matching day. So last year we met up at Birmingham and if you imagine we kind of sat around this big conference style table um eating our curry lunch which is a must and then we've got like loads of paperwork. We've printed off all the matchings and um we're working through the lists and we confirm every pairing together. And it's something we always wanted to do was to have this personalized approach where the technicians, the three of us were matching um all the mentors and the mentees together. So we'll look through um the matches and then the trickier matches especially where their technicians are from more um niche roles.

We'll spend a bit more time working through this. And then for these technicians, we could also if we don't have somebody from our pool who's applied, we could draw upon our own networks to see if we can find a suitable person or um if we still need more support than that, we can write we can reach out online for our wider technician support networks and also through um the ITSS has channels as well that we can uh put profiles out and try and get those last few matched. The um last year we also had um a mentor and mentees um dedicated teams channel which is quite nice because we wanted13:4113 minutes, 41 secondsthem to have especially the mentees we wanted them to have a network as well that they could access into cuz the mentors already have quite a few um um channels that they can meet people from. sthey go to conferences but some of the mentees they may not have that network of technicians beyond their institution. So we also have found that the um the mentees as Fierce said um some of our mentees are coming on to be um mentors in future cohorts which is lovely. So we're actually retaining people.

They're starting as mentees and then they're coming back and they've got the confidence and the skills and they're actually mentoring in future cohorts which is lovely. So, we're get really getting to know some of these people. We'll bump into them at conferences, which is lovely. Yeah, it's fant. I was about to ask, do mentees become mentors? Um, and obviously the um the geographical between you three is not actually that far, is it? War, Leicester, Birmingham. I'm from the Midlands myself, Lington Spar. So, the geographical is not actually that far. So, um it's not like14:5014 minutes, 50 secondstraveling to to to Sterling, is it Charlie? Not quite scheme now for around three years in the third year this year. Has has the numbers increased per year? Has have have they sort of say steady? How how many how what's roughly how many numbers do you think people how many people apply per year? Um around I think for the first year we had about actually I'm not sure on this one cuz I was on maternity for the first cohort.

Can I pass this over to one of the others? Of course you can. Yeah I I seem to remember we had about 24 pairings in the first year and then we um practically doubled that for the second intake and we're on the recruitment for the for the next intake. So that's only just started. Apparently we're at about just shy of 10 applications on the mentees so far. But I think we're only a week in and um we're running somebody correct me until. May with I think it's the 19th of May or somebody one of my colleagues will remind everyone at the end of the podcast. Um so we've seen a doubling in size from the pilot cohort to the second and tech and um the jury is out for this year. We're hoping that we'll sort of can can steady this at just shy of 5016:32 applications because we take great care uh in in doing that human matching and I I reckon that at some point that becomes unwieldy if we get too many applications. You have to have two matching days two curry lunches. I think totally could. When it comes to the mentoring stage, are three are you three on the panel from the mentoring stage? You put yourself do you put your names in the hat for mentoring? I have mentored in the first cohort. Didn't have anyone last year because I changed worlds and found it quite stressful at work. Um, I needed a breather, but I'm going to put my name in the ring again for this year's cohort. What about you, Lisa? Um, I think I'll probably stay on reserve and if I see someone that I think could work, then yeah, maybe. Yeah. What about you, Trey? Is your name in the hat this year? I think I probably will put my name in the hat this year. like the I was covering a different role last year, so I didn't have the capacity to take on sany mentoring, but I think I may well put my hat in this year. Trevor also volunteers half of his um teammates. He's always volunteering somebody from the floor above or below him. Like I know Mike, he's on the floor above me. He could totally do this one. That's what technicians do though. You you pull a few strings and you might you know what, I'll volunteer for this now. You just push them push them a little bit. But that's and unfortunately and that the world we're in. Some technicians do just need that little bit of a a push. I am doing the pushing gesture to our audience who can't see us. Um they just need a little push in the right direction to hopefully progress their career or support someone who's whose career is needing a little nudge in the right direction.

 Um has there been any career defining moments for people who have been on the mentoring scheme? And this one and the I'm going to throw this one to you. I would say they have we do a um routine check-in after the mentoring's finished with all our pairings and we um ask them to say how useful it's been or not. Um thankfully uh the overwhelming majority of respondents found found it really useful and we've got case studies that show that um for example uh someone's said I've got a promotion out of the conversations. So I gained the confidence and also the tools to write a really compelling application and um I'm convinced that the mentoring helped. Obviously mentoring alone will have got someone a promote pro promotion but um but it's it's one of the jigsaw puzzle pieces isn't it? And somebody else came back and said, I um my mentor helped me to write a business case to my own institution to apply for funding to um put into strategic work for our technician commitment action plan. Uh which I found really lovely because it shows that there is a sector relevance to the um mentoring. It's not just that we are um helping technicians not feel so isolated and solve their problems, but it's also uh something that's self-perpetuating. It it strengthens the technical profession in higher education by actually um feeding back into the technician commitment. Um so we're we're stren strengthening leadership across the sector and uh on the on last year's cohort we had somebody who needed scientific glass blowing skills and she said afterwards I would never have thought that you would be able to help me with this but she um she got matched with a scientific glass blower as it happens at Warick and um they've now applied for funding so she can come visit and actually um learn for a few days in practice. So um so I would say this has got tangible implications for people's work life. That's incredible.

It's really really positive to see. So, do applicants need to have a specific thing they want mentored in when they apply or are they just kind of looking for a bit of general support or. Yeah, I think you have to know what you want because otherwise we find it really hard to match you with somebody. Um, and we find that the more specific the application is, even if somebody says, "I'm not entirely sure what I need, but this is my problem." We can often make something of that. Whereas if if somebody says, "Yeah, I don't I can't actually think of any of the more vague applications." But but the more you tell us in succinct terms, obviously it needs to be readable and quickly as such, think of us having to read through 50 60 applications. But um the more compelling you can make your case of what um what you're after and potentially what kind of person might be able to help you with it, the easier it is to find a really good match. Um because what we don't want is pairings that are sort of meh. um it that we can have on our own campuses by the existing mentoring schemes. So you just mentioned pairings that are met. What happens if you don't get on with the person you paired with? Um a bit of an adop question. What happens if you you just you're just bring heads a little bit and they haven't got the same maybe drive or ambition that you may need to progress? Um what happens?

Do you re just do you say we're gonna cut ties? How how do we go about that? It varies a bit. There's always us in the background um to be able to help with a little intervention. Not that we are going to um uh adjudicate in in any pairings, but if somebody really doesn't get on with their mentor or the other way around, it it is probably a waste of time to continue. Um what we're doing in the background on the team site and with um with certain induction sessions, etc. is we try to equip people with tools to have a polite conversation about it. um so that you don't just become a no-show to the next set meeting. You have the tools to say look I don't think this is working. That is to be expected in in I mean in every so many pairs there will be a pairing where the interpersonal chemistry isn't quite right or the timing isn't quite right for the person to hear what they need to hear. Um, and depending on where we are in the stage, we can say we can try again for another mentor or and I think we've actually successfully done that once or we say apply again next year if you feel you want it. Um, but because we're there as a team and we have help from Sarah Allen and Fiona Pool from the ITSS, um, we're not just stepping back once the matching is made.

We appreciate the flag that something isn't quite working. We check in with our mentee mentor pairings as well to see that they're really meeting. And if there's no evidence that they're meeting, we try to find out why. You both you both mentioned you put your names back in the hat, Trevor. You've both that you're going to potentially mentor again this year. I got a question for you, Trevor. Do you need do you offer any training? What if I want to become a mentor? Do I need any specific training or do I just need to be a friendly face and a bit of experience? Do you offer that training on the on the sort of course? We you don't need specific training to be a mentor. Um as you say, being a friendly face and having the knowledge and the skills and be willing to pass on to somebody else. That's the main thing. We do have resources on our team's channel for mentors, advice on different ways to mentor, how to have the conversations, how to discuss with um the mentee what exactly it is that you know they are looking for. Um and also being honest with them that and with us whether you can actually deliver that in the in the first place. Um cuz obviously when we do the matching process we don't we do not get a full list of every skilling experience that every mentor has. So we have had um incidences where the mentor has come back to us and said now I've spoken to the mentee I do not feel that I have the skills and experience to mentor this person properly which allows us to then find another mentor for them. Um but I say we have resources on our team's channels. We have I say a dedicated channel for the mentors where again if a mentor has any questions wants to ask any advice certainly if it's your first time mentoring and you know you a lot of our mentors have mentored before so it does allow you to ask questions you know get some advice get some feedback about the best way to have a conversation set up the mentoring um also again It depends what type of mentoring it is, how technical it is or whether it's just more over general career progression or management techniques. Um it would be a different style of mentoring depending upon what exactly the mentee needs.

Amazing. So anyone could sort of support mentoring wise depending on what the mentee needs. Now my next curve ball I'm going to throw you another curveball. Is this just open to university based technicians or can this be offered to technicians within colleges or in schools? Bit of a random one, but obviously technicians are technicians in the in the in the suppose the the world of technicians. Can this be offered is this being offered to colleges and schools or just just a university um sort of mentoring scheme? Unfortunately, it's um limited to UK higher education or research institutions. So, anyone who um can be a signary for the technician commitment as a rule of thumb can also apply for mentoring uh on the scheme. We are supported really generously by time from staff at the Institute of Technical Skills and Strategy and they've got a funding remit that we need to stick to unfortunately. Um it is a scheme that theoretically could easily be broadened out. It would probably need more manpower. Um but but the tools that we set up are all transferable. that if there is if there was somebody who said you know what this would be a brilliant thing if we widened that to further education or even schools then um if they contact us we'll give them everything that we have for them to run possibility is endless um but at the moment we're concentrating on higher education or further education um amazing so another I've got another one another curveball I'm all I'm full of curve balls. So I got to keep you on your toes. You see structured questions here. We've got more curve balls. What if I fill the first year I want to support mentoring? But maybe don't have the time.

Could I volunteer use my could I volunteer some time support or just jump in some teams calls and listen in to how things are going just to see if I I've got time maybe the year after to could I volunteer my time support or not? That's one we haven't thought about really before. It's an interesting question. I think there is a confidentiality aspect. Um, it would very much depend on whether a mentee in that pairing would feel confident in um in having somebody else sit there. It's probably like when you get to your GP and they sit with somebody from a med school and go um you don't have anything against them knowing everything about you, right? Um, it would be a a sensitive conversation that would probably need some notice. Um, it's it's not a bad idea though uh for people who who aren't show sure whether being a mentor is for them or not. Yeah. But if you're in doubt, I reckon you're already so far advanced in thinking about it that you can probably just volunteer.

What you could volunteer for so much? We've uh we've got a workshop coming up at the specialist um technical specialist network event. Um and that's in April 28th. So you could come on by that and give us a hand with the workshop if you want to volunteer time. There you go. There you go. See if anyone's interested. Hopefully the episode goes out before that happen. Amazing. Charlie, do you want to finish on the last one before I curve? So many so many curve balls questions coming in from Mike. He's been listening and scribbling and trying to you might get an application coming in from Mike. It sounds like Excellent. The more the merrier. Honestly, we need all the men now. So, we'll just contact you if somebody suitable comes up and we'll just see if you're available for that.  Yeah, I'm used to my emails being filled. So, just keep just keep emailing. It might take me two weeks to reply, but yeah, absolutely. Fill them up. It's absolutely fine. Experience. It's fine. It's learning that. That's a management skill. That is trying to learn how to manage your emails and then Michael, manage your own time. I'm just like, yeah, that's what you can mentor on, Mike. Management of emails. Management of emails. Yeah.

So for anyone who's listening like Mike um and is interested in maybe getting involved either as a mentee or a mentor, what do they need to know, Lisa? Um so I think if you're thinking about it, you're already at the stage where you should just go for it. So there's no costs involved to joining the schemeeither to you or your institution. And I think last year we had up to 38 institutions involved. So, you're already getting yourself a big network. If you wanted to find a way to contact somebody at a certain university, you'd be able to go on your um your team's channel and you'd find somebody. And I think it's a great way to um expand your network. Um just complete an application form, but the caveat is you have to put as much detail as you can in so that it can be because that's really the point where we use it for the matching. So, we really need a good strong detailed application form would be awesome for33:0833 minutes, 8 secondsus. So, the applications are open now and they're going to be open until the 18th of May. So, if you need more information, um, you can find our page on the ITSS website.

Fantastic. And it's is it open to all UK higher education institutions or do you have to be technician commitment? No, it's open to all um UK high institutions. Oh, fantastic. That's great. Well, does it cost anything to apply? No. So all our time is we give willingly and then um so yeah apart from um we get support from the ITSS from um Fiona Paul and uh Sarah Allen so big thank you to them who are also um a big part of helping us run Sims te but no there's no cost to you as an individual being a mentor or a mentee that's amazing that I mean it sounds very simple other than um make sure if you're listening and put as much detail as you can in your application and you'll get the best match possible. I think that's really key, isn't it? Like the more effort you put into your application, the better your match is going to be and the more you'll get out of it by the sounds of it. So, thank you. Do a bit of a random one. Do you do you get um a certificate of completion? Do you get um anything to saying you've completed the mentoring scheme? No, but you should, shouldn't we? Because at the moment we all have badges because I made us all badges for uh a conference we went to last year. So we all have Sims tea badges and like Trevor had little bits of conicle flask with bubbles on them because he's chemistry and I had like a DNA spiral cuz I'm life sciences. But yeah, should we produce certificates? That's a great idea.

You've completed one year and should we have like gold stars for if you complete several years to encourage people to like participate in several cohorts?This is an excellent idea. you do money from a mentor. You've got a new Yes, we should. The answer is yes. And if you could send me over your design, that would be brilliant. Thank you so much for volunteering. Don't worry, I'll make a will make one for me. Yes, I like this. I like this reward system. Yes, Sims T reward. I know. Encourage encourage. Unfortunately, in actual fact, we don't there isn't a certificate or anything. Um, but as said, It would be it would be nice to have you know something to show that people have done it even uh to avoid print cost something they could put in their email signature or something like that. Yeah, I was about to say I'm a T- level uh ambassador for T- level students and you get a little little badge you can put in your email signature. So maybe get a S ampt sort of I'm a mentor mentee um logo for your your signatures. Uh I just want to thank all three of our fantastic guests for their information and my answering my wild curveball questions within this interview today and this this conversation today. I think it was really informative and if they wanted more information then we'll link down below in the description of the video uh the website to where they can get more information. Really really nice to speak to you all and and what a great scheme that you've put together. It should be it was it's really really great. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for listening to the technician commitment podcast. To learn more about the technician commitment or if you're interested in joining, please visit the technician commitment website, which we will link in the description of this podcast. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the technician commitment podcast wherever you get your podcasts.