So hello everyone welcome back again to
#ResDevInYourPJs. Today we have
Paul Gilbert with us who is the
technical manager in IIB and also
currently temporary head of
operations as well. So Paul hello and
we were just really wondering how you
and your technical colleagues are
dealing with the situation that we
are currently in.Well technical staff know
more or less than anyone else
it's all a strange situation particularly if people
who are very lab bench based and
suddenly finding what they can't do a
lot of things that are meant to be doing
and I think generally people are coping
pretty well it seems to be a very
elevated sense of camaraderie I think
and we're all seeing a lot of the
technical staff have been keeping
themselves busy by wading into helping
out wherever possible with all of the
ongoing work and essential work that's
happening at the university because of
course while most of us at home there's
an enormous amount of work still going
on and be that the you know the
increasing COVID-19 research work that's
happening or just maintaining all of the
critical functions that we can't just
walk away and leave and for those
technicians who aren't able to or aren't
engaged in those activities we've got
plenty of stuff that can be done from
home all the boring admin stuff that no
one wanted to do beforehand no excuses
now I think we're all catching up on
those okay we also have Blanca with us
from our and research stuff association
hi Paul, hi um yeah I'm a postdoc at
the Institute of Integrative Biology and
also deputy co-chair of the Research
Staff Association I wanted to ask you
for where did the need to create safety
net come from. It came from so those who don't know safety net is an online health
and safety management system we've
developed in IIB and it came really from
the fact that we had very manual
paper-based processes that weren't
really up to scratch and with an
increasing number of amount of stuff
sorry increasing my research
our staff is really is a really
difficult and labor-intensive
administrative process and if you can
have better systems and everyone's I
want to say happy but its health and
safety everyone's in a better place and
of course it means they can all do it
from home now challenges to get people
to use it well the challenges are no
different from any health and safety
system you've got some people are very
engaged and understanding of the
processes and why it's important others
less so and I think what we've hopefully
done is create a system where it's
easier for people to do it without all
of the paperwork and the understanding
of who they need to go and speak to when it's actually easier hopefully to learn
and do it from your desktop and to see
how others are doing it as well do you
have any tips for researchers or or
technicians to use this time wisely what
we as a main main body of technical
staff that I'm in touch with is labour
we haven't really been using any major
new ideas or solutions the biggest tip
really is about we're all working very
strange times and we're all being
interrupted constantly by things outside
of work and just adopting or
understanding a realistic sense of
priority and perspective and what you
can do with your time is it's probably
the most important thing I think we all
work to a pattern when we're in actually
physically and work that we're in for a
certain set number of hours and our
productivity is what we what we manage
within that time frame and those time
frames have disappeared so having a
decent perspective on our own
productivity and understanding that
others might be different is probably
the most important thing that moment and
there's a hashtag on Twitter called
hashtag technicians make it happen and
that sort of highlights all of the
wonderful work technicians do across the
country during the current health crisis
but also just throughout the rest of the
year and I think you can see if I scroll
in through it the enormous amount of
work that technicians and other staff at
universities are really working on and
doing at the moment in it's a wonderful
collaborative effort and shows the
dedication of staff at universities
really we can highlight here the
technicians hub as well that you have
as part
the Academy intranet as well team yes
yeah please do so hopefully you'll be
you know more people start using it
we've got all information there about all
the technical work we do an initial
community and the technician commitment
which is a really important thing to
mention here as well great fantastic
well thanks everyone so that's that says
for today so please remember the hashtag
res dev in your PJs and and also just
like hi back again as always our
researcher hub at www.liverpool.ac.uk/researcher
So thank you
very much and bye from Saneeya as
well and myself and we look forward to
seeing you again soon
