Staff are a higher education institution's key resource in advancing the entrepreneurial agenda. Many areas of the entrepreneurial agenda – for example entrepreneurship education, knowledge exchange, measuring impact – are fast moving and require new skills and new knowledge to be acquired, shared and developed within the organisation. Some of the skills and knowledge may not yet be (sufficiently) present within organisations. To meet the needs of the entrepreneurial agenda, HEIs should be continuously monitoring current training needs, demand and opportunities.

Skills and knowledge currently present in the organisation should be mapped against the requirements of the entrepreneurial agenda in areas such as: leadership and governance; internationalisation; knowledge exchange; entrepreneurship in teaching and learning, business support, and evaluation.

Training opportunities should be offered to staff at all levels and across all faculties/departments as well as to external experts involved in the provision of entrepreneurship education, start-up support and other activities on the entrepreneurial agenda. Often forgotten are administrative staff, despite their core role in promoting change. For all of these groups, a formal policy for career development should be in place, which is sufficiently resourced and provides room for individual goals and objectives. This should also include mandatory training opportunities for external stakeholders involved in entrepreneurship promotion.

HEIs need to allocate resources to staff development, including time for staff members to pursue training activities. Training can be internal or external to the organisation. In-house training is less resource intensive for the organisation (budget) and individual staff (time). Furthermore in-house training can increase collaboration across units and thus reduce traditional boundaries. Internships and temporary placements (secondments) in businesses and business support organisations should be considered as possible training opportunities.[1]

It will be important for staff to have training with peers from other HEIs. Higher education institutions should collaborate to achieve this and seek support from their respective government partners.

[1] For more information, see the Guidance Note HEI-business/external relationships for knowledge exchange.