Wednesday 20 April saw the launch of the Shadow Matching Scheme intended to provide professional services staff with job shadowing opportunities across the University.

The pilot scheme works on the basis of a reciprocal arrangement over the course of three half-days between professional staff in academic schools and colleagues in central service departments. This will allow colleagues to break down some of the silos in which we too often operate and help them to better understand the work of other parts of the University, as well as provide them with a fresh look at their own professional practice.

The event on Wednesday 20 April was the first of these sessions:  all the matches were revealed and each pair was able to meet and start discussing their roles and what they were hoping to get from the reciprocal shadowing visits. The event was extremely successful with an impressive total of 76 people, across both academic schools and central services, having signed up for this pilot scheme.

The informal feedback we have received so far has been extremely positive. A more formal feedback gathering will take place in a couple of months – when most shadowing visits will have been completed – which will inform the way this scheme will be taken forward in the future.

This new scheme is part of the “Excellence through partnerships” enhancement theme of the ‘Excellence Initiative’, which the Academic Division has been running since 2012 for professional staff in the University’s schools and faculties   More information about this scheme and others is available on the Excellence Initiative website, the go-to place for all professional staff in schools to learn about the various projects which have been put in place under the Excellence Initiative since its launch.

If you have any question or suggestions about this scheme, please contact C.gallien@kent.ac.uk