Technicians Survey headline findings

The headline results from the recent Technicians Survey are now available.

The survey was run at LJMU throughout late February, March and early April 2024 by the National Technician Development Centre (NTDC), who have previously undertaken the survey with more than 20 universities nationally, allowing us to compare findings against key benchmarks.

Response rate

A huge thank you to those who took the time to complete the survey. A response rate of 77.8% shows the importance LJMU technical staff attach to this, well exceeding the national average response rate of 70%.

Headline survey findings

• Technicians at LJMU are 13% more likely than the national database average to be on a permanent contract with 90% working on a full-time basis.
• Technician ethnicity exactly matches both the city of Liverpool ethnicity demographics and that of the national database.
• LJMU technicians are more likely to demonstrate and teach technical skills than the average with a higher-level supporting teaching (93% versus 67% nationally) rather than research (61% versus 78% nationally).  
• Whilst staff qualification levels are similar to national levels (64% have a bachelors degree or higher at LJMU vs 67% nationally) LJMU staff are half as likely to be professionally registered outside of the university.  
• 61% of staff are aged 50 or under with 15% aged 61 or over with 61% identifying as male and 31% female.

Next steps

The university is committed to further exploring the survey outcomes and feeding a response into our Technician Commitment action plan, ensuring visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians working in higher education and research, across all disciplines.

The 24-month plan will be compiled by our Technician Commitment institutional lead, Katie Farrance (Teaching Technician Manager, Faculty of Science) in collaboration with Organisational Development and will be publicly available.

Students at the Heart Conference session Thursday 13 June

If you’re interested in finding out more about the survey outcomes and the developmental requests from staff, please do come to this year’s Students at the Heart Conference on Thursday 13 June when Ollie Manton (NTDC) and John Trantom (Organisational Development) will be sharing further insights.