Imperial College London is dedicated to the support and development of all its research staff. Imperial’s Strategic Plan for 2020-2025 states “we will build a supportive, diverse, inclusive and highly motivated staff community across all disciplines, functions and activities… to help us to attract and retain the talented and diverse staff we need to achieve our mission” - to achieve enduring excellence in research and education in science, engineering, medicine and business for the benefit of society.

Imperial’s Human Resources strive to attract, develop, reward and retain a diverse community of the highest calibre staff and to provide an efficient, effective and integrated service to all users of our services.

Imperial’s HR Strategy & Recruiting Staff

The College has been committed to the HR Excellence in Research since 2012, originally mapping the HR Excellence in Research Award against the ‘UK Concordat to support the Career Development of Researchers’. Imperial’s new focus on The European Charter for Researchers & the Code of Conduct via the HRS4R implementation and continued commitment as a UK institution to the UK Concordat offers a dual focus strengthening the actions and aims of the College to continue being sector leading in the researcher development landscape enabling all researchers to excel.

Ensuring that actions and progress are made enables the College to contribute to making Europe an attractive place for researchers from across the globe.

Imperial is proud to be sector leading with regards its specific support for researchers; with a long history of support for researchers and the excellence of a tailored programme for the 2,400 early career researches (ECRs). Dedicated support for ECRs is provided via the Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre (PFDC). The College has invested and committed to the core funding of the PFDC since 2012. To ensure that ECRs have the opportunity to access the services that are available to them, all ECRs at Imperial benefit from ten days training and development in their contracts.

The College is committed to supporting all research staff. The Learning and Development Centre provide a suite of programmes tailored for academics career development including: Leadership, Communication, Personal and Professional Development: Development Opportunities for Academics.  

Imperial’s Graduate School is proud to deliver award winning and sector leading professional development opportunities to postgraduate student.  Professional development is a key part of the educational experience at Imperial and the programme offers opportunity for postgraduates to develop attributes which are of most value to a broad range of employers and supports students to develop as world-class researchers.

Imperial was a founder member of the Athena SWAN Charter in 2005 and achieved a Bronze institutional award in 2009. Imperial was awarded Silver at institutional level in April 2016 (on the new post-May 2015 criteria). Our award was valid to April 2020, but as per AdvanceHE’s policy given the ongoing review of the Athena SWAN Charter, our award has been extended to November 2020.

All departments at Imperial are on the Athena journey. The majority hold awards, and the other departments are working on applications. The Business School (Imperial's only AHSSBL department) successfully applied for Bronze in the April 2016 submission round.