People (Process, Tech)
This post is partly based on experience with Research Consulting’s Research Contracts Benchmarking Exercise - if you haven’t already you should read the report here.
One of the key findings of the Research Contracts Benchmarking Report was that recruitment and retention have generally both become more difficult since 2018.
Nobody asked, and I have no skin in this game anymore1, but here are my thoughts on why this is and what research contracts teams can do to meet this challenge.
Contracts Are Difficult
Reviewing, drafting and negotiating contracts is a difficult skill that requires significant training and experience before you can get any good at it. I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to be good at contracts, but as a benchmark the legacy route to qualify as a solicitor took six years of academic and practical training - and that’s just to qualify, not necessarily to be any good!
Recognising that recruiting into a contracts team is to find people with a high level of deep expertise is key to finding the right people. Too often it seems that this is misunderstood, particularly by HR teams or job evaluation panels.
It can also be pretty brutal at times. Contracts teams are not-infrequently under fire by colleagues who undervalue their expertise and do not appreciate the value they add.
How can this be changed? By championing contracts teams and clearly articulating their purpose (aligned to the organisational purpose and strategy) - as well as backing them up when there are ill-founded complaints. By ensuring that all aspects of the service - process, resources, tech - support the team in doing their best work rather than frustrate them or disengage them.
Harnessing the value and depth of expertise in contracts teams that can be shared across universities, creating a culture where they are appreciated and acknowledged as experts delivering value - these are key to retention of staff.
Stop Recruiting Contracts Managers (Part 1)
Contracts Managers are the backbone of the sector - and relatedly, they are the most difficult position to recruit due to the competition amongst employers.
I completely understand wanting to recruit someone who can ‘hit the ground running’, but this is short-term thinking. If you are going out to recruit a contracts manager, at least consider whether you might be better off recruiting more junior, entry level roles that might attract those looking to enter the sector.
Growing the next generation of contracts managers rather than just looking to poach existing contracts managers has several advantages. You’re likely to receive a higher level of interest from people who are keen to break into the sector and keen to develop. You can offer apprenticeships which provide recognised qualifications, and are likely to be able to draw upon the apprenticeship levy to fund these. You can offer development opportunities for your existing contracts managers through line management - an excellent experience that helps people reflect on their own practice.
I acknowledge this is far easier in a larger team - if you have 1FTE of contracts resource then you’ll have fewer options - but I’ve seen large teams whose structure is virtually a flat line. By expanding junior ranks both you and the potential applicants can benefit.
Stop Recruiting Contracts Managers (Part 2)
Universities have a special kind of language when they write job descriptions - they are very focussed on finding someone with specific experience (rather than skills or capabilities to do the job). In short - they look for someone already doing the job they are looking to recruit to, and job descriptions are written as such. This means a lot of very capable people will self-select themselves out of the process if they aren’t in the exact role you are recruiting to. And consider that variations in remit across contracts teams could mean a too-specific contracts job description rules out anyone except your existing contracts managers in your team…
Maybe also consider what terms people will search for if they are looking for a job. I’ve said before that I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to be a contracts specialist - but if you are open to recruiting lawyers you should include terms like ‘lawyer’, ‘in house’, ‘commercial’ in your job description. Because this is what people are searching when they look for a job - unless they are already in the sector they are almost certainly NOT searching “Research Contracts Operative”.
Make sure your job description is short, describes the skills you would need to succeed in the role, and doesn’t contain niche experience or acronyms that wouldn’t be understood by anyone outside of the sector.
And while we’re on that…
Stop Recruiting Contracts Managers (Part 3)
University website, jobs.ac.uk, maybe ARMA, maybe Praxis if you are lucky.
This is where most job descriptions for contracts staff go - but if that’s the extent of your job advert then you are fishing in a small, tightly defined pool. Only staff at universities or some research organisations are likely to ever see your job advert.
You should be trying to fish in as many pools as you possibly can - there is a world of commercial contracts managers out there beyond the research sector, and they will bring new perspectives and tools that you may very well benefit from having in your team.
Consider including key words that those in those roles might be searching for to ensure they see your JD.
Obviously this goes hand in hand with deleting “x years of university research contracts experience” from your JDs…
Develop Progression Pathways
Not everyone wants to progress ‘up the chain’ and that’s fine - but there should be a way for everyone to develop into the next role if they would like to.
This means a few things - firstly, making clear expectations. Keep all job descriptions for the team in place that everyone in the team can access them - this allows people to use those JDs in their annual review and professional development meetings, to see where they are already meeting competencies and areas they might want to spend the next cycle focussing on.
Also make sure there isn’t a valley of death between grades - for example, I’ve seen teams where junior roles aren’t required to be legally qualified but more senior roles are required to be legally qualified. That’s not a problem in-itself, but if this is the structure you want to implement then you need to make sure you are offering junior members of staff access to courses and development opportunities that enable them to become legally qualified. Otherwise you are cutting your own staff off from progressing which devalues their work and experience and you will have a retention problem.
Even if you don’t have this valley of death, consider offering training and qualification routes - not to bang on about apprenticeships, but…apprenticeships are a great model and can be used to upskill existing staff. But even if not, ensure you have a comprehensive in-house training programme, or consider the offerings from bodies like ARMA2 and Praxis.
Overcome University Jargon
I have no idea what “Grade 5” means, and neither do most of your potential pool of applicants. Even those from other organisations don’t know as, despite the single spine points, each organisation bands their salaries in different ways. Some use numbers, some use letters - a Grade 5 salary at one organisation might be a Grade 7 at another, and a Grade K at a third.
If the salary for your role is not immediately clear within the job description then people will move on. One JD I saw linked salary info to an HR page that was locked behind a staff log-in page. Other roles I’ve seen state a grade but then the HR page has different salaries depending on which part of the university the role sits within. You are creating an artificial barrier for applicants by not simply stating the actual salary within your job description.
Also…and this will be controversial…you might want to think about remote working.
I KNOW.
There are lots of reasons this is difficult - team cohesion, supervision, not to mention institutional policies (universities in particular are ‘place-based’ organisations, which makes locality a focus).
But here’s the main three reasons that I think top all objections.
Firstly, you are recruiting from a massively larger pool of potential applicants if you are not relying on (a) people who are already local to you, or (b) people who are willing to uproot their life and potentially the lives of their family to join you. You are much more likely to find the best people by recruiting nationally, and offering fully remote working (potentially with in-person team meetings every quarter) as an option.
Secondly, other organisations are doing this. Some university contracts teams, but certainly other sectors hiring contracts managers, are offering fully remote positions. If you are not then you are suffering against your competitors in the marketplace.
Thirdly, it’s the right thing to do. It’s been proven that offering remote working disproportionately enables those with caring responsibilities and particularly women to remain working. If you are genuinely passionate about diversity, wellbeing, and belonging in your team, it is something you can’t afford not to consider.
I know organisations may have rules about x number of days in the office, but the truth is we proved during the pandemic that the job can be done - and done well! - without being in the office. And I believe the unique pressures on recruitment and retention for contracts staff should permit a local deviation from institutional policy.
Fin
Substack tells me this post is nearing email length limit - so I’ll stop ranting there, and wish you luck with recruitment!
In some ways the recruitment problems are good for me, as you are more likely to need external support
Conflict of interest - last week I ran the ARMA Intro to Research Contracts course - let me know if there are courses you would find useful for us to develop!
This article should be posted to every University and other contract writing organization in the world. I concentrate on contracts and have for forty years, and I am training a highly competent attorney to be my successor. I fully expect that this will be a multi-year project to bring her to the level I have gotten to. That should only be expected, as the amount of knowledge required for a contract writer in the Research arena is staggering. The jargon alone is incredible-- MTA, DUA, CTA, subaward, consortium, vendor, "completion date," -- and the regulatory underpinnings are equally daunting -- Human Subjects, Animal Welfare, GDPR, FERPA, HIPAA, Radiation Safety, Community Right to Know-- again only a bare few of the issues.