Recruitment resource pack

Introduction

It was clear from the literature and the case study work that getting the right people into embedded researcher posts is a considerable challenge. Recognising this, we sought to provide some helpful materials to underpin the recruitment process. Drawing on the documentary resources gathered in the scoping exercise (workstream 2), and in dialogue with our study participants and members of our embedded research network, we prepared a recruitment resource pack, whose contents are presented in full in this chapter. The pack itself is available on the project web page [www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/programmes/hsdr/165221/#/ (accessed 18 February 2021)], and an editable version can be downloaded from the Embedded Project website.67

In doing so, the team reviewed a range of job descriptions from extant schemes and used these, together with the emerging insights from the research, to create the necessary components to support recruitment. The pack contains a sample (customisable) job description and person specification for embedded research positions. The development of these incorporated the learning from the literature reviews (see Chapters 2 and 3) and the case studies (see Chapters 4 and 5), drawing in what embedded researchers and service people involved in embedded research initiatives indicated were important in terms of attitudes, skills and knowledge.

Guidance on possible approaches to recruitment and interview panel composition are also provided. These are quite generic, recognising that embedded roles could be hosted by many different organisations with different recruitment processes (e.g. see the diverse cases described in Chapter 4). These resources are supported by additional information for embedded researchers on how to prepare for their role if successfully appointed, and information for organisations on how to create a conducive environment for embedded researchers to thrive and the embedded research model to be sustained. These job-related resources could be used both by organisations looking to set up an embedded research initiative and by researchers considering an embedded research role as a career move.

The sample job descriptions and person specifications are intended to be used alongside the design framework (described in Chapter 6) to enable local teams to consider their project/team establishment and staffing as appropriate for their setting. By working through the framework, it is expected that the team will have a greater understanding of the social and organisational constructs under which their embedded research initiative will need to operate, and can thus adjust the sample job descriptions and person specifications accordingly. It is also expected that, if these resources are customised to support local constructs and contexts, then communication across partnerships will be stronger, leading to more robust local arrangements.

It was apparent from many directions, including the literature, our scoping work, the workshops and the embedded network, that, notwithstanding some common underpinnings, the actual manifestations of embedded research were very varied. For this reason, the recruitment resources noted previously and suggestions for access to training and development support were designed as broad guidance, rather than prescriptive ‘must-dos’. Training and development needs should be factored in when planning an embedded research programme or by funders seeking to seed new initiatives; however, delivery of this will be determined by both the specific programme of research and the individual researchers’ development needs. The training resources noted in the pack discuss the range of models of employment to promote sustainable embedded initiatives (e.g. shared funding models) and address the skills needed to gain and sustain funding. It was clear from many discussions that there was a risk of ‘career suicide’ for researchers unless they were strongly connected to and supported by (often through contractual arrangements) a local university setting, so these arrangements need careful thought.

The resource pack contains an introduction that sets out the background to the pack and its aims, and four sections:

1. embedded researchers – who and what are they (an overview of the embedded research role)
2. questions to consider when designing an embedded research initiative
3. helping an embedded research project to thrive
4. resources (materials to support the recruitment, training and development of the embedded researcher).

The rest of this chapter sets out the contents of these four sections.

Embedded researchers: who and what are they?

The resource pack groups the skill sets found among embedded researchers into four themes: functional activities, researcher skills and expertise, relational roles and learning mechanisms. Organisations should consider which of these is most relevant, but should bear all in mind, even if some elements of the programme have not yet been nailed down. As the findings set out in earlier chapters show, the changeable nature of embedded research programmes means that any areas of ambiguity may result in tension later down the line, particularly if expectations or accountabilities are not clear.

Functional activities

Embedded researchers must be comfortable with a broad portfolio of work, and a variety of activities within that work. Examples that we found included building relationships; collecting and analysing data; facilitating educational activities; participating in meetings; and having the project management skills to plan, manage and lead their own work.

No matter how well written the job description is, these activities are often quite fluid and will evolve with the piece of work. An embedded researcher needs to be comfortable with this emergent nature. Recruiting managers should consider how to foster any training and development opportunities to help develop some of these skills in a newly recruited researcher.

Researcher skills and expertise

Researcher skills and expertise can be defined into three broad categories:

1. Topic-specific skills relate to any clinical or practice-related issue that the embedded research initiative might focus on (e.g. diabetes, neurorehabilitation or childhood obesity). Not all embedded initiatives will require topic-specific skills, but it is worth identifying early if a specialism will be an important contributor to a researcher’s success in the programme.
2. Methodological skills relate to the research ‘know-how’ of the embedded researcher. They include the ability to define and refine the focus of the knowledge-creation activity, to collect and analyse data, and to produce knowledge of different kinds.
3. Interpersonal skills and expertise include the facilitation skills, communication skills, relationship-building skills and emotional intelligence necessary in programmes that are complex, have multiple stakeholders and rely on being able to build relationships quickly.

Relational roles

Embedded researchers will play different roles in different organisations, depending on the subject of their research. Some researchers may offer a fresh pair of eyes and a new way of seeing things. Others might provide an additional pair of hands, producing knowledge and evidence to drive the organisation’s processes and activities. They could also offer specialist or expert advice. They may do just one of these things, or all three, at different stages of the programme. An embedded researcher can also be a ‘critical friend’, so maintaining a critical stance towards the health setting is important.

A number of relational factors will therefore contribute to a project’s success, including the extent to which embedded researchers view themselves (or are viewed by others) as insiders or outsiders in the health setting, the degree of flexibility and control they have over their work (including disseminating findings), and the extent to which they are able to access spaces within the health organisation.

Relatively simple logistical arrangements, such as the employing organisation, and how easily researchers are able to access space within a health organisation can affect these relational factors, and should therefore be considered in designing the programme of work.

Learning mechanisms

Embedded research initiatives use a variety of mechanisms to learn how things are going and whether or not they are achieving their intended outcomes. Ambiguity about the aims and objectives of an embedded programme will make this measurement hard.

The NHS and other health service organisations tend to use performance monitoring mechanisms including key performance indicators and annual performance reviews, whereas programmes that are funded and/or controlled by organisations with a strong research focus tend to make use of formal evaluations.

Other programmes may use more informal mechanisms for learning and reflection, such as group or individual supervision, team meetings, workshops and learning sets.

Depending on the programme of work, the embedded researcher will need to be comfortable with the arrangements for tracking progress, and will play a key part in ensuring that this progress is tracked.

Questions to consider when designing an embedded research initiative

This part of the resource pack contains a series of prompts to help in the design of an embedded research programme, and to help create the optimal conditions for a researcher to thrive and the programme succeed. It directs users to the Embedded Research website67 to understand the background that informs the questions. The questions are grouped by theme and are set out in Table 15.

Helping an embedded researcher thrive

This section of the resource pack underscores the finding that clarity of arrangements for an embedded research programme, such as the nature of the research, how it is funded, and even logistic details, such as line management or where a person will sit, can make the difference between a highly effective programme and one that fails to flourish.

Common tensions during a project can arise from issues such as differing expectations of the researcher role or a piece of work; lack of clarity about how success will be evaluated, and what represents value for money for its funders; and a sense of loneliness or lack of belonging for the researcher, who may be perceived as an outsider by both the academic and health organisations they are working in.

This section works in conjunction with the prompts in the Resources section of the pack, and sets out a ‘handy checklist’ of ‘absolute must-dos’ before advertising a position. (Those who find their project design needs more work are pointed to the Embedded Research website67 for help with designing an embedded research programme.)

The list is grouped by topic and takes the form of a series of questions, as follows.

Aims and objectives

Are you as clear as you can be about the aims and objectives of the piece of research? Do you understand the purpose of your piece of work, and is that understanding shared across all partners? Do you know how you intend to measure performance over the course of the work?

Sponsorship

There will potentially be a tension between academic and service needs. Is there a senior individual in each area of work who can sponsor the embedded researcher to ensure that this is a positive tension?

Management

Do you have a clear understanding of, and clear agreement for, the management of this individual, particularly if it will be a joint appointment or their post will be jointly funded by more than one organisation or funding stream? Are you clear on the logistics of a joint appointment: who will offer performance feedback, support and coaching, not only to meet the programme’s objectives, but also to support the academic career of the researcher? Will the researcher have sustainable employment in the long term, and which employer should they best be employed by so they can ‘speak truth to power’ if the research results are not as expected?

Belonging

How will you support the researcher to become part of their teams in each organisation in which they work? How will you support them in their handover between teams?

Scope and boundaries

Do you have a clear idea of the scope of the work and the activities that you want the researcher to carry out? Are you clear about the accountabilities within the role, and the expectations you have of the researcher and the piece of work? Is a blended team more suitable to what you want to achieve than an individual researcher?

Introduction and support

How will you introduce the researcher to, and integrate them with, the team? Embedded researchers often have to walk a difficult line between gaining the trust of the team and remaining objective about their research; how will you support them in this? They must blend the worlds of academia and delivery, which can leave them feeling that they do not quite fit in either; what support can you offer? This will be instrumental in helping the embedded researcher to thrive.

Training and development

Embedded researchers need to possess a number of skills and often navigate complicated organisational and professional situations. For an individual to thrive in this role, how can you support their ongoing professional development? (A more detailed list of the types of training that might help an embedded researcher to thrive can be found in the next section, with information on some providers.)

Resources

This part of the pack contains resources to help organisations to recruit an embedded researcher, including a generic job description and person specification, two draft advertisements, and guidance on developing a training and personal development plan for the successful applicant. These resources are open source, and can be downloaded from the resources section of the Embedded Research website.67

Job description

Sitting in front of a blank piece of paper to write a job description can be both daunting and time-consuming. The resources pack contains a ‘long-hand’ job description (Box 1), based on a review of a number of examples from embedded researchers already working in programmes of research. Guidance notes are included in italics in square brackets.

Employing organisation 1 (employment contract): [name here].

Employing organisation 2 (honorary contract): [name here].

Role descriptor: Embedded researcher.

Remuneration: [range on appropriate pay scale].

Responsible to: The researcher’s employment contract will be with [employing organisation 1] and an honorary contract may be held with [employing organisation 2]. There will be an assigned workplace in both settings and responsibility to both organisations.

[This is an example of useful language. In our experience, these jobs are normally organised as a joint contract; the researcher’s employment contract may be with the university and an honorary contract held in a specified department of the local authority, NHS trust, care or voluntary sector organisation. As a minimum, we recommend clarity as to which organisations are involved and who holds day-to-day responsibility for the researcher. An organisational chart may help illustrate the researcher’s lines of accountability.]

This job description is intended as a starting point – organisations are encouraged to adapt it to fit their programme of research and context. An editable version of the job description is on the Embedded Research website.67

Person specification

The person specification in Table 16 is a basis to work from, designed to be a helpful tool rather than the definitive answer. Each category is classified as essential or desirable, but these classifications should be changed as required for the specific role.

Job advertisements

This section of the resources pack contains text for two draft job advertisements (see Boxes 2 and 3) that could be used to recruit an embedded researcher. Organisations may, however, prefer to write their own advertisement, tailored to their organisation.

We are looking for an Embedded Researcher to support applied research and make a difference to changing our research culture from an optional extra to part of core service delivery.

The successful candidate will need to be a researcher with a track record of working with the NHS and/or local government and/or voluntary sector. They will need to be independent, resilient and innovative and have exceptional influencing skills and experience of developing funding applications for high-quality research in close collaboration with health/care/voluntary [delete as appropriate] staff and managers. They will be a critical companion, diplomatically challenging staff assumptions and ideas and answering their questions with a sensitive approach.

Being ‘embedded’ in the service setting increases the potential for well-designed research, applied directly to the context in which solutions will be adopted, to facilitate successful implementation and improve health and care for service users. This model allows researchers and health and care staff to understand and value each other’s roles, knowledge and approaches and to develop their complementary skills. The team will undertake research of value both to [insert organisation title] and the wider health and care sector.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a highly applied health services or social science researcher to make a practical contribution to improving service user/patient care. The embedded researcher’s role is both to mobilise established evidence and to create new knowledge through pragmatic evaluation.

The role is wide-ranging, and the successful applicant will be expected to negotiate their contribution to the research initiative once in post and to agree a role with the partners that is both ambitious and achievable. This is likely to include the following roles:

• working with and alongside a range of people across organisational boundaries
• focusing on knowledge and bringing people from completely different disciplines and backgrounds together
• being the supportive facilitator between research and practice, making research more accessible to staff as a topic and showing them how they can either use existing research and evidence or actually create research and evidence themselves.

Ever felt you want to do something more . . . applied? Wondered how you could combine your passion for research with the operational knowledge of those working in health service delivery to make stuff . . . better? Perhaps it felt like you could do more to translate theory into practice? Well, we’ve got some good news for you – we’re setting up an embedded research programme, and we’re looking to recruit our embedded researcher.

Don’t worry if you don’t know a lot about embedded research as an approach – we hadn’t heard of it either until we saw this video [hyperlink to animation]. But when we did, the lightbulb switched on and we realised that this was the thing we had been looking for – a chance to bring research to the frontline and to make a real impact, straight away.

But we need to be up front with you: embedded researchers are a rare breed. Some would say unicorn rare. They’re passionate about research, having devoted their early career to perfecting their technical skills in research methodology and funding applications. But they also love working with a diverse group of people. They’re brilliant at communicating, and often act as the (diplomatic) critical friend to the services they work with.

Most importantly of all, they care about improving things. They want to bring the rigour of research to the messy world of service delivery and make a difference, to the patients, to the staff and to the system.

If you’re reading this and thinking ‘This sounds interesting’, then it’s almost certainly worth picking up the phone and calling us to learn more. You may surprise yourself and discover that you’re actually a unicorn and you didn’t even know it.

Interview process

As these roles can be complex, with posts often funded from two or more organisations, the selection process needs to consider the needs of all funding organisations. This section sets out five suggested steps:

1. Invite representation from all funding bodies to be involved in the selection process. This could start with joint agreement of the design of the research (see Helping an embedded researcher thrive for questions to help with these discussions) followed by the development of an agreed job description and person specification. At this point, line management for the position should be agreed.
2. If numbers allow, a representative from each funding organisation should be involved in the interview panel, allowing for appropriate gender and ethnicity representation on the panel.
3. The person taking line management responsibility for the position should ideally chair the interview panel and ensure clarity on the employing organisation. The approach to line management and sponsorship from other funding organisations should be explained to interviewees. This will help foster a sense of belonging from the outset.
4. Consider involving a public/patient representative on the panel, to again foster the importance of this from the outset.
5. Develop interview questions based on the agreed job specification, to ensure a focus on testing against essential criteria, particularly interpersonal and communication skills.

Training and development programme

As discussed previously in this chapter, embedded researchers need a portfolio of skills to be successful in their role. These skills and personal attributes should form part of the continuous professional development of these individuals. This section of the resource pack contains suggestions for this process.

Many embedded researchers will be hosted by more than one organisation, as the bringing together of research and practice in a single role often means joint funding. Organisations should therefore:

• ensure that performance and development needs are discussed regularly with the individual researcher by both organisations they work in, that is the academic and service organisation
• produce a shared development plan that is owned by the researcher and recognised by both organisations.

The resource pack offers a list of suggested core development activities and some optional additional activities, drawn from the research and case studies in workstreams 1–3. The list is not exhaustive and is intended as a list of options that could form part of a researcher’s ongoing development, alongside other personally identified development needs.

This training may be delivered by a variety of sources; some suggestions are listed in the final section of the pack: ‘Useful organisations and further resources’.

Core skills development

• Communication and listening skills.
• Presentation skills.
• Personal resilience.
• Service evaluation.
• Quality improvement activities.
• PPI techniques.
• Budget management.
• Developing networks across boundaries.
• Research programme-specific knowledge (e.g. integrating care systems, building a nursing research network).
• Writing and submitting research grant applications.
• Writing for a variety of journals: academic and service journals.

Optional activities

• Action learning set facilitation.
• Coaching tools and techniques.

Useful organisations and further resources

Finally, the resource pack contains links to organisations and further resources. These include sector-level bodies, such as the NHS Leadership Academy, The King’s Fund, the Local Government Association, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and Universities UK, and resources for networking with similar professionals through Health Education England Library and Knowledge Services.

Dissemination plan

The tools and resources described in this chapter, underpinned by the theory, evidence and conceptual frameworks described in Chapters 2–6, have resulted in a rich legacy from the Embedded project. This section summarises how this legacy will be maintained and developed.

The Embedded research website

The Embedded research website,67 developed in partnership with the Kaleidoscope Health and Care team, is the principal and enduring source of information for anyone wanting to consider and use the learning arising from the Embedded project. The website will be maintained by the University of St Andrews Research Unit for Research Utilisation team, which, over many years, has developed a significant international reputation for its work on knowledge mobilisation.

Most importantly, in terms of making a practical contribution to supporting embedded research in practice, the website67 hosts the tools and resources developed in workstream 4 and outlined in this chapter: job descriptions and person specifications for embedded researchers, advice about how best to recruit embedded researchers, and guidance to help new embedded researchers and their host organisations prepare for carrying out embedded research initiatives. These resources are available in a format that allows them to be downloaded and customised by those who want to use them.

The website also provides access to this final report, publications arising from the project in peer-reviewed and professional or trade journals, the framework developed empirically from workstreams 1–3, an animation introducing embedded research to new audiences, and podcasts and a range of webinars and blogs developed by the research team and our partners. New information and practical resources can be added to the website, adding value to the current content.

Twitter activity

The project Twitter account, @_embedded, which, as of 11 December 2020, has 325 followers, will remain operational and is a useful way of disseminating new learning and information about future events.

Publications

Eight papers have been, or are in the process of being, produced by the Embedded team (see Publications). Six of these are aimed at academic audiences and have been/will be published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals (three of which will be open access); two are targeted at practitioners and have been published in professional or trade publications.

Presentations and wider influencing

The Embedded team has presented the study’s findings at a large number of conferences, seminars and interactive ‘melting pots’, as summarised in Acknowledgements. During the COVID-19 crisis, many of these presentations were delivered online; links to the recordings, if available, are accessible on the Embedded research website.67 In addition, the senior members of the Embedded team fulfil a range of leadership roles in the academic and health and care sectors and, in these roles, will continue to promote the insights about embedded research gained from this project.

Concluding remarks

This chapter has presented in detail one of the key outcomes of the Embedded project: the embedded researcher resource pack. It is hoped that this will prove a flexible and useful resource for any organisations wishing to embark on embedded research. It is a rich resource, informed by research and drawn from the findings of other workstreams in the project, that should help address the challenges of developing and implementing an embedded research initiative, from the initial conceptualisation and goal-setting, to the recruitment of suitable candidates, and the support necessary once in position for the researcher and the project to thrive.

Collaboration and dialogue were important features of the resource pack’s development, resulting in a dynamic resource that reflects the real-world experiences of embedded researchers and those that work with them. In combining sets of questions and prompts with ready-made elements, such as job advertisements and person specifications that can be tailored to need or used ‘off the peg’ as preferred, the aim has been to create a dynamic and adaptable resource. A portable document format (PDF) of the pack can be printed out from the project web page [www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/programmes/hsdr/165221/#/ (accessed 22 March 2021)], or an editable version can be downloaded from the Embedded research website.67

We now turn to the final chapter, bringing together what has been learned in the course of the Embedded project before presenting a discussion on the findings and pointing the way forward for further research in this area.