Mapping the future: (Yin Yang): career development collaboration between three Australian universities

“Jobs come and go but people who are the “best at what they do” and who have achieved the highest recognition for their skills and knowledge in their profession are treasured forever.” (Caelan Farren). “Our staff is our biggest asset” is an oft remarked statement in most organisations. So what are organisations doing to ensure that their biggest assets are harnessed and nurtured by way of creating career development framework and pathways to ensure that the foundation of knowledge and experience required for excellence in each core profession is established and enhanced? Bond University, University of Western Australia and Griffith University have collaborated to develop a career mapping toolkit which builds on an earlier commissioned project completed by CAUDIT (Council of Australian IT Directors) that focused on enterprise information technology roles. This tri-institutional collaborative project reviews in detail the skills, knowledge and abilities of library and eResearch management roles in our respective organisations.

The aim is to develop a toolkit that catalogues and maps the core professional roles needed in the next 2-3 years in our respective institutions. The approach specifies the knowledge and experience required in each core professional area including where there is overlap. The career map provides a toolkit for identifying the knowledge areas and skills, abilities and competencies required for each core area (organised by career streams) and roles. What does this mean for staff? There is a clear and defined career pathway identified with a series of positions graded by complexity. Progress along the pathway can be achieved via coursework, professional development, training and/or practical experiences to reach the requisite competencies.

What does this mean for each organisation? With a career toolkit, library and eResearch senior staff in each university can align and build their staffing profile to fulfil and support the university’s strategic directions moving forward. A robust staff development strategy can be developed with the focus on building: i) succession planning and developing a talent pool ii) workforce plan, and iii) specific career plans for each individual.

An online tool will be developed that encompasses all career streams laying out typical career paths within each stream, individual position profiles are accessible for staff and managers. This ambitious collaborative project is the first of its kind in Australia in seeking to develop a career development map and toolkit which combines the library and eResearch professions across three universities namely the University of Western Australia (member of the Group of Eight Universities (Go8)), Griffith University (member of the Innovative Universities Group) and Bond University (Australia’s only private and not for profit university).

This paper will share the outcomes of the project which illustrates the fine balancing act of collaboration (yin) with competition (yang) amongst three of Australia’s higher education institutions at a national level, with the aim of contributing to the career development of professionals in the fields of library and eResearch.