I would encourage anyone considering being a peer reviewer for the HR Excellence in Research Award to put themselves forward. I have been a peer reviewer for about 18 months and have found it a really interesting and fulfilling role.

My main takeaways are:

You get to see and learn from what other universities are doing to support their researchers, including universities operating at vastly different scales and different context to your own.

It is really helpful for developing your own institutional work, and preparing for your own EIR submission.

It is an excellent insight into how peer reviewing works on a sector wide scale, which can be applied to other roles/opportunities.

The workload is not as high as you might think on average one review per period so maybe 3-4 per year. The support from Vitae is superb.

Finally, you get to meet and work with so many excellent fellow peer reviewers from across the sector and build valuable connections.