The Political Staffer Resource Centre offers recommendations, advice and support for political advisers, their managers, and advocates for reform.

It’s an open access resource developed by Professor Jennifer Lees-Marshment at The University of Dundee from research on the human resource management of political staff – see https://www.dundee.ac.uk/political-staffer-resource-centre

It shares practical recommendations from interviewing political staffers and those working in close association with them about what best practices they had experienced, observed and developed over time when working in parliament and government. It covers:

• The role of a Political Staffer – the different roles, skills required and motivations
• Recruiting and selecting political staff – what to look for, where to find people, how to assess them
• Orientating and onboarding political staff – how to learn the job, how to help other staff learn the job, including both informal and formal approaches
• Ongoing training and career development – content to cover, how to train them on the job, self-training, and formal programmes
• Making workloads in political offices feasible – prioritisation, planning, structures, self-managing workloads, enabling breaks and work-life balance
• Giving impactful feedback – on the spot, more in-depth reviews, giving usable feedback and making room for dialogue
• Building positive cultures in political offices – creating positive teams and safe spaces to grow and develop
• Maintaining morale and motivation – setting a clear purpose, highlighting making a difference, being more connected and involved
• Wellbeing strategies for political offices – acknowledging the pressures, restricting non-urgent out of hours contact and supporting effective leave

To access the resources complete a simple form https://www.dundee.ac.uk/political-staffer-resource-centre/access-gated-content It’s free to register.

And please share with anyone you know who is interested in this area – whether they are a current staffer especially if they are managing other advisers; a new staffer starting out; a civil servant who supports political staff; a politician who wants to understand how to get the best out of their staff; or a campaigner fighting for reform and investment in political staffing.

We want the resource centre to grow over time through global peer learning, so we have created a mechanism for people to share additional ideas for how they put these principles: just use the sharing solutions form https://www.dundee.ac.uk/political-staffer-resource-centre/sharing-solutions-form.

If you have any feedback, please email us on politicalstaffer@dundee.ac.uk

Political Staffer Resource Centre https://www.dundee.ac.uk/political-staffer-resource-centre