UKTMN Job Family Survey Results

If you’re a UKTMN member based in a university, you might remember completing an online survey a while back, telling us about the career pathway/job family you’re employed on and what you think are the pros and cons of this pathway. 

Most university-based trial managers are employed on either a ‘professional services’ pathway or a ‘research’ pathway and it’s clear that there are advantages and disadvantages to both. It’s also clear from our survey that you are all different, and what works for one trial manager, doesn’t work for another. 

What is clear, is that people want to feel valued and recognised for the important work they do. We argue that universities should have a career pathway in place that is appropriate for trial management roles, so that if people want to, they can develop their careers and take on more senior roles that build on their specialist expertise. Not everyone wants to do this and, of course, that’s ok too – but we must support the trial managers who do, so we don’t lose their skills, knowledge and expertise, which is so vital to the clinical research landscape. 

As you might know, trial management roles cover lots of job titles, at lots of levels. If you’re not sure how to progress to the next level, you might want to look at our competency framework and a range of example job descriptions too. 

We are now pleased to share the survey results with you (see below) and have written a commentary that’s just been published in Trials. If you feel passionate about the need for trial management staff to have better career structures, that are applicable to their role, we encourage you to talk to senior staff in your department/CTU, School, Faculty and wider University. We will continue to push this agenda nationally and we hope that, together, we can make a difference.