Personal and professional development

Listed below are some of the University departments which offer training and development opportunities to University staff. Staff are encouraged to make the most of these opportunities to enhance their personal and career development.

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The People & Organisational Development Team (POD) is a small, dynamic team. Our aim is to enable the University, its teams, and all its people to thrive and develop so that together, we can achieve the academic mission. We strive to listen, support, challenge, and foster innovation, collaborating with various stakeholders across the University to enable people to grow and develop in their careers, support and develop leadership for greater inclusion, equity, and collaboration, and share good practices related to learning and organisational development.

From management and leadership programmes to mentoring and coaching schemes, we offer a range of development opportunities that are tailored to the needs of individual staff members and the University's strategic priorities.

Find out more: POD website

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Work Learn Develop is a new programme of fully funded professional training and development opportunities for University staff. The Work Learn Develop training courses cover a wide range of skill areas that are core to University administration as well as covering more niche skills areas. All of the courses are accredited and offer professional, job-related qualifications.

Whilst these courses are funded via the apprenticeship levy, they are available to staff of all ages and grades. The training does require a significant time commitment over a minimum of a year and as such both staff and their managers need to consider this and commit to completion.

Interested? Then find out more and find an information session on the University's People and Organisational Development pages at: https://pod.admin.ox.ac.uk/work-learn-develop

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Oxford University Language Centre provides courses and resources for staff who need foreign languages for their research or personal development.

Find out more: Language Centre website

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Digital Skills Courses 

A range of teacher-led courses in IT and digital skills are provided, at very low cost, by IT Learning Centre (ITLC) at Oxford University IT Services. Explore the list of courses and details in the whats-on page. If you can't attend an ITLC course in person or online, you can download the course materials at any time, free of charge, from the IT Learning  Portfolio. Free access is also available for all University members to a huge library of high quality video courses available on demand from LinkedIn Learning

 

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The University Careers Service provides careers information for the University's academic-related contract research staff. The service is free and consists of a variety of elements, including careers discussions, access to information held at the careers service, computerised careers guidance and psychometric testing and career development workshops. Research staff who are interested in using these facilities and information need to register with the service and are eligible to use the service up to one year after their contract with the University has expired.

Find out more: Careers Service website

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The Department for Continuing Education offer more than 1000 classes and programmes each year across a broad spectrum of subjects. All but a very few of these are designed for adults who prefer to study part-time. Programmes include Oxford awards and degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate level, online short courses, weekly classes, day and weekend events, summer schools and professional development courses.

Find out more: Continuing Education website
 

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The Consulting Services team at Oxford University Innovation (OUI) support any staff member (academic, research or professional services) undertaking consultancies. They manage all the contractual and administrative aspects of consultancy, minimising the administrative burden while protecting your interests and those of the University, as well as supporting departments to undertake consulting and technical services work.
 

Find out more: OUI website

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Employees wishing to seek new challenges or development opportunities should consult the University job vacancies on the University website which lists posts and secondment opportunities that are available. 

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The Said Business School offers all Oxford University staff a 40% discount on any Online Executive Education Programmes.

Please take a look at the Online Programmes page to see something which may suit you.