Supporting our Researchers

Our commitment

Our Innovation Strategy (2021-26) continues our commitment to provide a vibrant, inclusive and supportive research environment where we nurture talent at all career stages. Two of our five Strategy priorities focus on our people: ‘Developing Creative Research and Enterprise Leaders’ and ‘Transforming our Culture’, which together will ensure we provide clear routes for success, and a connected system of training, resourcing, reward and recognition linked to the Salford Academic Career Pathways for Research-focused and for Enterprise-focused staff.

We are committed to building a diverse community of researchers that is welcoming and inclusive to all. Our aim, as set out in our inclusion and diversity policy is:

“To create an inspirational, inclusive learning and working environment, celebrating the diversity of our University community in our everyday conversations”.

The University currently holds an Athena SWAN bronze institutional award, recognising the successful work we have done to embed effective governance for monitoring and evaluating our policies and practices around gender equality. We are a member of the Race Equality Charter, a long-standing member of Stonewall and a Stonewall Diversity Champion, and have been accredited as a ‘Disability Confident’ employer for our actions around the recruitment and retention of disabled job seekers.

HR Excellence in Research award

In 2010 we were one of a small group of institutions in the UK to first participate in and be awarded the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research award. This required us to demonstrate how our support and development of researchers aligned to the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and enact a comprehensive action plan to ensure our activities would be effective.

Since first receiving this first award, we have prioritised our researcher development programmes, regularly evaluating what we do, which has ensured we are successful at retaining the award (last renewed in 2021).