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HR Excellence in Research (HREiR) Award – support for institutions applying/renewing the Award

Vitae Support

Vitae set up the UK process for the HR Excellence in Research (HREiR) Award to reflect the importance of the Researcher Development Concordat in driving improvements in the employment and support of researchers.

There are a number of advantages for UK institutions in making an application through the UK process including:

  • The strategy and action plan relate to implementation of the Concordat and QAA Quality Code: Chapter B11: Research degrees. There is no need to prepare additional plans to meet an alternative but related sets of principles
  • Institutions benefit from the co-ordination and support provided by Vitae as detailed below, including efficiencies of resources.

For institutions interested in engaging with the Award, Vitae offers:

individual advice including:

  • general queries about the Award and submission process and criteria
  • feedback on drafts, in advance of final submission
  • information and reminders on submission deadlines and dates at which internal and external reviews are due for each Award holder

support and co-ordination of the UK review panel including:

  • collation and allocation of submissions to panel members
  • management of panel meetings for submission reviews
  • co-ordination and management of panel comments for individual organisations and feedback to institutions
  • delivery of formal acknowledgements on achieving the Award and required documentation

publicity for institutions on gaining and retaining the HREiR Award
co-ordination of input on European Commission plans for future developments
opportunities to share practice with others who seek and hold the Award through face-to-face events and virtual networks.

We would be happy to talk to Vitae member organisations from outside the UK about the support we offer.

Watch back sessions from Vitae’s HREiR Award workshop held in November 2022 to gain insights from experienced HREiR peer reviewers, panelists and sector leads.

UK HREiR Award-holding institutions are encouraged to search for and reflect on other institutions’ HREiR Award and Researcher Development Concordat documentation, which should be publicly available.

Using the Award to deliver culture change

Enhancing institutional efficiency in Concordat implementation

What do you recommend when undertaking the HREiR Award with only a small team available?

Developing strong success measures

  • Success measures represent the tangible impact that you seek to achieve with your actions. Setting success measures that objectively reflect the outcome you are seeking for your researchers and the research environment will enhance how you measure progress towards the obligations of the Researcher Development Concordat.
  • During external review, HREiR peer reviewers regularly comment on the quality of success measures as an indication of how robust an institution’s forward action plan is. With this in mind, Vitae is currently developing a resource to illustrate what good success measures can look like.
  • Briefly, you should aspire to develop success measures that:
  1. incorporate researchers’ views wherever possible, as these encapsulate the researcher experience and represent the furthest point downstream from your actions
  2. provide explicit, numerical targets wherever quantitative data would be used for reporting
  3. provide clarity on expected information wherever qualitative data would be used for reporting
  • You should avoid excessive use of success measures that only indicate that an action is to be completed, as these do not provide an indication of the outcome that they aim to have.

Important: Success measures should strive to assess the impact of an action, rather than focusing on measuring its delivery.