Creating a career path for shared research resources personnel

Shared research resources are essential to academic research. A rapidly evolving workforce within a highly competitive market is making recruitment and retention of knowledgeable and technically skilled core staff more difficult. The inability to recruit and retain staff diminishes the resource’s overall ability to provide services, which in turn affects academic research quality. Research institutions need to recognize that the roles and skills of shared research resource staff are distinguishable from those of research staff in funded investigator laboratories, and in doing so, develop a career path for shared research resource staff that will help these facilities recruit, train, and retain them. This brief focuses on the creation of a standardized career track for shared research resource staff: A career path of at least 3 to 5 tiered positions with task outlines that can be tailored to positions needed in any shared research resource. Salaries will vary for individuals within each position classification based on experience, mastered competencies, and time within the shared research resource. Besides characterizing basic task differences between shared research resource staff and other research personnel, the most compelling reason for having a well-delineated career path for shared research resource staff is to establish fairness, equity, and true opportunity in a supportive working environment, where shared research resource staff are motivated by developing a marketable skill set, gaining professional selfconfidence, and earning a meaningful salary. Presented here is a case study from Oregon Health Science University of the creation of a career path for shared research resource staff.