Employment rights for researchers
Know your employment rights as a researcher
- Employment rights for researchers in the UK
- Researchers’ Concordat rights
What are your employment rights as a researcher?
In this guide we’ll be focusing on employment rights for researchers in the UK.
Knowing your employment rights as a researcher is important – these will define your career.
Employment rights for researchers in the UK
Most UK research staff are employed on a research contract with their university or institution. You are an employee of the institution, and therefore entitled to the full protection that employment law allows.
What employment rights do I have as a researcher?
- Your employer must ensure your health and safety at work
- Your employer must provide a clear statement of your responsibilities
- Your employer cannot dismiss you or make you redundant without consultation. A formal procedure must be followed if the employer wants to terminate your contract
- Your employer should have formal procedures in place for dealing with grievances, disciplinary matters, sickness absence, etc.
- You have the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation
- You have the right to expect the employer’s protection from bullying, harassment and work-related stress
- You have the right to belong to a trade union, for example the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK.
What are the rights of fixed term contract staff?
Most research staff are employed on fixed-term contracts tied to a fixed period of grant funding.
Workers on fixed-term contracts are protected by the Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002.
According to these, employers are not allowed to treat staff on fixed-term contracts differently to staff at a comparable grade who are employed on permanent contracts.
What are the consequences of these regulations?
- You cannot be automatically dismissed at the end of a fixed-term contract. The termination of a fixed-term contract is recognised in law as a redundancy situation and your employer must be able to show that they have tried to avoid making you redundant. This normally means that they must give you adequate notice of the redundancy and they must make an effort to redeploy you into another role. If they do not do so, the termination of your contract could count as an unfair dismissal
- You have a right of appeal against the termination of your contract
- You are entitled to redundancy pay if you have worked for more than two years
- After four years’ continuous employment on two or more successive contracts, the law regards you as a permanent employee. Your employer must provide “objective justification” if they choose not to recognise you as a permanent member of staff.
What are the rights of part-time staff?
Part-time workers are protected by the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000. Employers are not allowed to treat staff who work part-time differently to staff at the same level who are employed on full-time contracts. Certain classes of employees have the right to request a transfer to part-time or ‘flexible’ working.
What about health and safety at work?
The employer’s responsibility for health and safety in the workplace is ‘personal and non-delegable.’ This means that:
- The employer owes a duty to each individual employee. If the employer knows that a worker needs special consideration – either because of the nature of their work, or their personal circumstances – they must give that special consideration
- The employer cannot make excuses by blaming another individual or group of individuals if something goes wrong.
It is the employer’s responsibility to provide both a safe workplace and a safe ‘system of work.’ This includes providing adequate training, supervision, protective clothing etc. where necessary. It also includes regularly assessing workplace risks and planning to mitigate them.
Work-related stress is recognised as a health and safety hazard and employers have a duty to ensure that workers are not harmed by work-related stress.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has responsibility for ensuring that employers comply with their health and safety duties. The HSE conducts audits of organisations and ensures that they meet nationally agreed standards for managing workplace risks, including stress.
Bullying and harassment
- Employers have a responsibility to protect employees from bullying and harassment in the workplace.
- The employment arbitration service ACAS issues guidance on how employers should deal with bullying and harassment.
- Although this guidance is not legally binding, it is regarded by most employers (and by the courts) as a standard of best practice which employers should adhere to.
ACAS defines harassment as “unwanted conduct affecting the dignity of men and women in the workplace. It may be related to age, sex, race, disability, religion, nationality or any personal characteristic of the individual, and may be persistent or an isolated incident. The key is that the actions or comments are viewed as demeaning and unacceptable to the recipient.”
ACAS defines bullying as “offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.”
Some further information from ACAS on bullying and harassment:
- A key feature of the ACAS guidance is that victims of bullying and harassment do not have to prove that the behaviour they are experiencing counts as bullying or harassment.
- If the victim’s perception of the behaviour is that it is bullying or harassment, the behaviour is automatically unacceptable.
- The victim has the right to expect the behaviour to stop – and the right to expect the employer’s support, if necessary, in getting the behaviour to stop.
Who should I speak to if I think my rights have been infringed?
- Your line manager
- Your mentor if you have one
- Your research staff representative if you have a departmental or university Research Staff Association
- Your institution’s Personnel Office
- A designated contact or support person for bullying and harassment (many universities have networks of trained staff who can be consulted for help in these situations)
- Your trade union (if you belong to one).
What is the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers?
- The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers sets out clear standards that researchers in the UK can expect from the institution that is employing them.
- The Concordat is specific to UK-based institutions; there is also the European Commission’s ‘European Charter for Researchers‘ and ‘Code of Conduct for the recruitment of researchers’.
What are the principles of the Concordat?
The Concordat sets out seven basic principles which should underpin the employment of research staff:
- The importance of recruiting and retaining researchers with the potential for excellence
- Recognising the value of researchers as employees
- The importance of equipping researchers with the skills to be effective and adaptable workers, not just in their current post, but also in their ongoing careers
- The importance of supporting researchers’ personal and professional development
- The need for researchers to engage pro-actively with opportunities to develop themselves
- The promotion of equality and diversity
- The need for regular review of progress in achieving the principles of the Concordat.
What do these principles mean for researchers?
- The Concordat principles state that recruitment should be open and transparent. Therefore there should be no favouritism or discrimination in the recruitment or selection processes.
- Researchers are entitled to receive an induction period in a new institution through a probationary period and having such resources as a mentor.
- Research staff should be represented on relevant departmental and institutional committees and be encouraged to form Research Staff Associations. You should not be excluded from discussions that concern academic staff and you should have opportunities to voice your concerns.
- The researchers’ contribution to the intellectual life of the institution should be properly recognised. This means that you should be able to take part in bids for research funding; your intellectual property should be safeguarded and not assigned to your institution or Principal Investigator; and you are entitled to due recognition on publications, grant applications and in efforts to commercialise your research.
- Researchers should also be recognised for their contribution to the wider life of their institution beyond the reach of their research topic. This can include: teaching and supervision duties, public engagement and knowledge exchange activities.
- Institutions must support the long-term careers of research staff.
- Universities and institutions must ensure that the development of researchers is not undermined by the instability of employment contracts.
What are further recommendations for how institutions should treat researchers?
- Give timely end of contract notice
- Actively seek to redeploy researchers once contracts end
- Provide bridging funding to enable researchers to continue in their post between periods of grant funding
- Provide open and transparent mechanisms for promotion of research staff
- Provide training to enable experienced researchers to move into research leadership roles.
Things to takeaway
- Most UK research staff are employed on a research contract with their university or institution. You are an employee of the institution, and therefore entitled to the full protection that employment law allows.
- Employers are not allowed to treat staff on fixed-term contracts differently to staff at a comparable grade who are employed on permanent contracts.
- The employer’s responsibility for health and safety in the workplace is ‘personal and non-delegable.’
- The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers sets out clear standards that researchers in the UK can expect from the institution that is employing them.