Administrative officials are responsible for ensuring that all employees under their direction comply with UC Berkeley policies, applicable laws, regulations, and special restrictions. Ongoing staff training is an essential component in achieving this end, and it is just as important as having well-designed departmental and campuswide operational controls. Staff cannot comply with policies, laws, regulations and restrictions if they have limited or outdated knowledge.
Training is also critical in promoting staff retention and motivation. Through training, employees have the opportunity to develop their skills to better perform their current responsibilities, and also to prepare for future advancement at UC Berkeley.
Research activities, whether conducted in the field or laboratory, can pose unique hazards to researchers and their subjects, and compliance risks for both the investigators and UC Berkeley. Governmental regulatory agencies, funding entities, accrediting bodies, and other entities external to UC Berkeley have established mandatory training requirements for persons involved with certain types of research. Departmental administrative officials are responsible for insuring that their researchers have completed this required training. The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research has prepared a matrix that summarizes the various types of research that require documented training, and provides links to campus groups who can provide the training.
Administrative officials can support an employee's professional, technical, and/or managerial development with release time, leave without pay, full or partial payment of educational expenses, alternate work schedules and/or temporary reassignment. Staff Policy 50 confirms that there is no limit on the amount of training or development time per calendar year, which may be designated as job-required by the department head. In addition, non-probationary career employees are eligible for up to 40 hours (non-exempt) or five days (exempt) release time per calendar year for professional development, which may or may not be job-related.
The Staff Learning and Development website hosted by Human Resources lists a variety of training and professional development websites.