Understanding and managing your career in higher education
Location: Online
Date: Thursday, 4 December
Time: 12:00-13:00
Price: Free and exclusive to AHEP ‘associate’, ‘members’, ‘accredited’, and ‘fellow’ members
About this session
This session draws on new research that introduces the first comprehensive framework for understanding the career experiences of university professional staff. The findings provide valuable insights not only for individuals navigating their own career journeys but also for institutions aiming to strengthen workforce development and retention.
In today’s age of disruption professional staff careers can feel uncertain or fragmented. Understanding what is most important to you in your career and recognising which career profile in this new framework best reflects your current situation, can provide clarity and confidence. This kind of reflection helps you think more positively about your future, identify practical next steps, and take greater ownership of your career development.
For institutions, the research highlights the importance of moving away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to professional development. By recognising that staff have different values, motivations, and career orientations, universities can design development opportunities that are more tailored and impactful. Aligning professional development with the four identified career profiles not only improves staff engagement and satisfaction but can also lead to a more cost-effective use of resources.
Why attend?
This session provides up-to-date research on the careers of university professional staff including what this might mean for your own career. This session will provide insight into your own, and others’ career profiles and how this can be useful for your own and your teams’ career planning.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Understand the professional staff career orientation and what values underpin this
2. Understand the four career profiles and reflect on which profile best aligns with your current career stage and what this might mean for you in your future career
3. Explore how institutions can use the framework to design more inclusive, cost-effective professional development strategies that respond to diverse staff needs
Please note, this session will include breakout rooms. In advance of the session, please complete this Career Profile Evaluation document. Thank you.
We look forward to welcoming you to this event.
Supporting Careers, Strengthening Institutions: A Framework for Understanding the Careers of University Professional Staff
Michelle’s report provides the first comprehensive framework for understanding the careers of professional staff in higher education. The Report is the culmination of three years of research and identifies a dominant hybrid career orientation and four distinct career profiles:
- Corporate Citizen: loyal contributors who prioritise job security and purposeful progression.
- Enterprising Agent: mobile strategists who take calculated risks for career advancement.
- Balanced Grower: professionals seeking to balance career growth with life commitments.
- Constrained Professional: capable staff whose careers are limited by structural or systemic barriers.
The report is a call to action for university leaders, sector bodies, and policy makers to prioritise professional staff careers as central to institutional sustainability and innovation.
The full report is available here.
Speaker
Michelle Gander
Associate Professor
Edith Cowan University, Perth
About Michelle
Michelle worked in higher education professional services for 20 years at The Open University in the UK and at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. After receiving her PhD in 2020, she transitioned firstly into academic management as an Associate Dean, and more recently to a full-time academic position as an Associate Professor at ECU in Perth. She started researching the careers of university professional staff back in 2009 and she published her first paper in 2010 in Perspectives, the journal of AHEP. She continued to research and publish on different aspects of careers throughout her professional service roles. Whilst on the now defunct MBA Higher Education Management offered by the IOE, her and two colleagues published the first ever book on this subject—Managing your Career in Higher Education Administration. She now has a teaching and research role, lecturing in work and career units to business school students and continuing to research the careers of university professional staff. Her mission is to improve how stakeholders view professional staff in the academy and to help everyone have the sort of career they want, through evidence-based research.