Deciding who does what

Who?

This document and process is aimed at those who are already involved in ARC governance and interested in undertaking additional activities and opportunities that arise from time to time within ARC governance. Usually this means:

Strategy Board Public Partners
PPI Champions
PPI Theme Champions

What?

This process is designed to help us make decisions about:

who is allocated individual pieces of work
who joins working groups (or other similar activities)

This process is for opportunities that are only open to public contributors already involved in ARC governance. We can also use it for making decisions about any other opportunities that are limited. For example training courses, conferences etc.

For appointments to be a Strategy Board Public Partner, a PPI Champion, a PPI Theme Champion (if not already a Strategy Board Public Partner or a PPI Champion) or other roles that are open to applicants not already involved in ARC governance people must go through a full selection process including: application, application review, informal chat. This is then followed by an induction period. Details of these processes are available separately and usually updated for each recruitment activity.

Process

We have designed a simple expression of interest process for internal opportunities to help us make decisions about who does what. The process is also designed to avoid ‘first come first served’ situations where those who are fastest to respond are chosen. Decisions will be based on 3 different things:

Expression of interest. This is so we know who is interested and why they are interested.
Skills, knowledge and experience register. This part of the process is not just about making decisions based on existing skills, knowledge and experience but is also a way to help make decisions that support public contributors to gain skills, knowledge and experience. The importance of this will depend on whether activities/tasks are for an individual, for someone who will be working independently or for working as a group and whether support can be provided to help develop skills, knowledge etc.
Spreading the load/opportunities. This means we will take into account who is already doing what. We will aim to achieve a fair balance between people but not at the expense of making use of or building skills, knowledge and experience or supporting people to be involved in what they are interested in.

This process involves 3 steps:

Step 1: Put together details of the opportunity, including:

a brief description of the task/activity
how many people will be needed for the activity/task
clear guidance on how long the task/activity will take and over how long a period (ie what people are committing to)
the fee that is expected to be paid (not just the rate but the anticipated number of hours)
clearly state how the task/activity will be undertaken (eg online, in person or independently)
identify any specific skills/knowledge/requirements
give a deadline for submitting an expression of interest and when a decision will be made (usually as soon as possible but as far as possible within a week of the submission date)
anything else that is considered important

Step 2: Circulate details of the opportunity to all governance public contributors (as detailed in ‘Who?’ on page 1) as follows:

Usually shared in a simple email but it can be done in a document if this is felt appropriate.
Include the details from Step 1
Include details of how to express an interest:
- How to submit their expression of interest eg by replying to the email
- What to include in their expression of interest eg please tell us why you would like to be considered for the opportunity and what you would like to get out of being involved. What you ask here can be different but the key is to keep it simple and relevant – people shouldn’t feel they need to ‘sell’ themselves – it is simply a way for people to explain why they would like to get involved.
- Remind people of the deadline for submitting an expression of interest.

Step 3: Making a decision:

It can be helpful to involve someone else in the process, especially if there are a lot of expressions of interest. This can be a member of the ARC staff team or a governance public contributor who has not submitted an expression of interest. Ideally it would be the chair of the group or a public contributor with ARC recruitment experience.
The decision should be made as soon as possible but within a week of the submission date. If it is likely to take longer make sure to let people know when the opportunity is shared or as soon as possible if this changes.
Make sure to consider:
- the expression of interest
- existing expertise/development needs based on the skills, knowledge and experience register and the balance of skills, knowledge and experience needed for the task/activity taking into account whether this is a role for one person, independent working or a group activity.
- what people are already involved in.
- balance in the group, for example not everyone needs to have lots of experience or none!
We will aim to make fair decisions and can use a simple scoring process when there are multiple people to choose between. This will be based on the following:
- Skills, knowledge and experience – scoring between 1 for no relevant experience and 10 for all relevant experience.
- Potential for personal development – scoring between 1 for no personal development opportunities and 10 for lots of development opportunity.
- Existing involvement – scoring between 1 for most current involvement and 10 for least current involvement.
- This is not an exact science but is a way to help us fairly consider all of the elements and make fair decisions.
Email people with the outcome and provide details of the next steps.

Implementation of the process

We will trial this for the rest of the current ARC (2025/26) so it is ready for ARC2 (2026 on). We might find we do not have many opportunities to make use of it as most of our projects have already begun, however there may be other opportunities that come along that we can use it for.

Examples: The following are a couple of examples of opportunities that might be shared:

Example 1:

Dear All,

This is an opportunity to join the XXX working group that we discussed at the last PPI Champions meeting.

Can you please reply to this email if you would like to express an interest in being a part of this working group, even if you indicated that you were interested during our the meeting. You need to submit your expression of interest by XX/XX/XX. We will make a decision as soon as possible but by the end of the following week at the latest.

The working group will build on the conversations that we had at the PPI Champions meeting and the aim will be to produce a guidance/process document to present at our meeting in July. We need 2 or 3 people to join Una to make up the working group.

The way we work on this together is likely to be a combination of meetings and activities/tasks to do outside of meetings. Initially the meetings and other activities will take around 2 days of your time over the next 3/4 months, although it might be more or less depending on how we decide to take the project forward. We will pay you for your time at the usual £25/hour rate (up to £300 depending on how the work progresses).

When you submit your expression of interest, by replying to this email, please tell us why you would like to be considered for the opportunity and what, if anything, you would like to get out of being involved.

Please submit your expression of interest to be a part of this working group by XX/XX/XX. Decisions will be made based on the expressions of interest received, the Skills, knowledge, experience register and consideration will be given to the spread of load/opportunities across the group.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Example 2:

Dear All

This is an opportunity to provide public reviews for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration: Thames Valley funding call.

What is the role? We are looking for Public Contributors to review applications for the ARC OxTV funding call. Each application can be for up to £10,000 and funding must be spent within this financial year. The role will involve reviewing application forms from a public perspective – as applications will be brief they should take no more than an hour to review. We would like public reviewers to pay particular attention to:

the Public/Patient/Community Partnerships detailed in the applications they review – is the planned involvement appropriate?
whether the application is accessible – is there a plain English description of the project that it would be possible to put on the website?
whether the suggested project is important to the relevant community.

When? The turnaround time on this funding call is short. We need reviews to be done between XX/XX/XX and XX/XX/XX. There is a simple application form to review and a short review form to complete. The review form is brief but is not specifically designed for public reviewers. We think each application should take about an hour to review and we would aim to offer each reviewer no more than 3/4 applications to review but you can let us know if you would prefer less applications to review. We anticipate needing 4 reviewers for this task.

Support and practicalities:

Support will be available to public reviewers throughout the review week and beforehand.
It would be helpful if people have previous reviewing experience but it is not essential as public reviewers will be offered an opportunity to discuss the review process and how to use the review form in advance of doing the reviews.
We will offer a payment of £25 (one hours work) for each review.
We will aim to allocate applications where there are no conflicts of interest, however we ask that if you feel you have a conflict of interest on any application you are allocated that you let us know. A conflict of interest might include a personal relationship with an applicant, being a co-applicant with the applicant on another project or for the project being reviewed etc.

Submitting an expression of interest:

Please submit your expression of interest by replying to this email.
Please tell us why you would like to be considered for this opportunity and what, if anything, you would like to get out of being involved.
Please submit your expression of interest by XX/XX/XX.

Decisions:

We will let you know by XX/XX/XX if you have been selected.
Decisions will be made based on the expressions of interest received, the Skills, knowledge, experience register alongside capacity to support and consideration will be given to the spread of load/opportunities across the group.

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI)