UniTasterDays training for students’ unions
Inspiring, insightful, and interactive training for your SU officers, staff members, and student-staff members
Inspiring, insightful, and interactive training for your SU officers, staff members, and student-staff members
We are now offering training for students’ unions, as part of our expanding portfolio of UniTasterDays training services. Our training options are designed for SU officers, staff members, and student-staff members working within the UK higher education sector.
Students’ unions are the bedrock of our universities. You provide students with opportunities, representation, and a safe space. In doing so, you allow them to thrive throughout their studies, and gain skills, friendships, and experiences along the way.
But it’s a big responsibility in a troubling landscape. You must contend with growing injustices, polarised online influences, and an epidemic of overwhelm. All this, whilst dealing with the usual complexities of an ever-changing officer team, and an increasingly segmented student population. And resources keep shrinking…
Rest assured, our students’ union training is here to help. We offer a choice of six themed training days. Each day is built to be energising, enlightening, and enjoyable. Our interactive approach will equip your SU officers, staff, and student-staff with the qualities and abilities to empower your campaigns, services, and members.
We offer a selection of six themed training days. Each is designed specifically for students’ union staff, officers, and student-staff. Furthermore, we will tailor each training day to your own students’ union following an exploratory conversation before your event.
Our themes are below. Simply select the theme that interests you to expand the dropdown box and learn more.
We also offer a pick-and-mix approach which allows you to choose sessions from two or more themes. Equally, you are welcome to request a topic not featured below, and we’ll explore whether we can deliver to your needs.
Communication isn’t a skillset owned by our marketing colleagues. We all need to be expert, engaging, inclusive communicators. This is especially true for SU officers, staff, and student-staff. We must communicate with a vast range of internal and external audiences, with diverse ages, professions, wants, needs, and channels.
This training day will teach you how to communicate with the right balance of care and flair. You will learn simple and vital ways to increase your readability. You will discover how to craft emails that are genuinely read and actioned. And you’ll learn how to create engaging professional and personal social media content.
Sessions will include:
Presentations are essential in our students’ unions. We deliver them on and off campus, online and offline, to a wide range of our members and stakeholders. We share advice, guidance, and insights about everything from our latest referendum to our wellbeing services to our positive impact across our campus community.
This training day will supercharge your presentation skills. You will discover how to create outstanding and inclusive slides. You will explore how to deliver with impact, adopting a confident and charismatic style. And you’ll learn how to manage a challenging audience with challenging questions.
Sessions will include:
Students’ union professionals are often overlooked by wider colleagues within our universities and sector. We can be dismissed and disregarded as a less valuable voice, perhaps due to our close relationship with the students. However, we know our role is critical in keeping our university population happy, healthy, and heard.
This training session will help you increase your visibility and credibility, both across campus and across the sector. You will develop the confidence to champion your projects, proposals, and protests.
This will generate newfound awareness and appreciation of your activities through the university. In doing so, you will secure listening ears, a seat at the table, and the all-important greenlight for your campaigns.
Sessions will include:
Stories are an inspirational way to engage our audiences: students, staff, stakeholders, trustees, and university leadership. However, as SU professionals, we don’t gather around a campfire. Instead, we tell our stories in the AGM, the lecture theatre, the halls of residence, the senate chamber, and the open spaces around our campuses.
This training day will teach you how to become a compelling storyteller and form an emotional connection with your constituents and colleagues. In doing so, you will inspire them to vote, join a campaign, stand for election, register for a society, approve your proposal, and rally together to create a better university for all.
Sessions will include:
It can be easy to lose sight of the big picture. Handing out flyers, trudging between meetings, fending off difficult questions in committee meetings… it’s understandable to pause and ask ourselves, "Why are we doing this again?" This training day will help you refocus on the "why" and develop your strategic mindset and skillset.
You will practice embodying your students’ union values, mission, and objectives in your daily activity. You will learn how to demonstrate this to your members, trustees, and university stakeholders through impactful reporting.
Your new appreciation of strategy will also help you empathise with your senior leadership (both within the SU and university) and ultimately engage them for future initiatives.
Sessions will include:
We need student-staff. Our students’ unions wouldn’t succeed without them. We need administrators, receptionists, campaigners, cleaners, security, influencers, vloggers, bar staff, welfare practitioners... However, we can't just use any willing student. We need the right students for each role.
This training day will help you find, recruit, and train your required quantity and quality of student-staff. You will learn to trust your students with new responsibilities, drawing upon their unique perspectives, talents, and networks. You will also become an expert in empathy-mapping models to aid student engagement.
Sessions will include:
Would you prefer to mix and match from our listed sessions? Or perhaps your students’ union requires training and development in an area different to those offered?
Or maybe you’re looking for something outside-the-box for a unique and memorable away day? Sustainability? Inclusive language? Wellbeing practices?
We’d be happy to help. Please do email [email protected]
Our training costs £2,250 + VAT for a full-day training session. This includes around 5 hours of interactive learning and development activity, built around refreshment breaks during the day. This fee is fully inclusive of all delivery content and expenses.
We also have a half-day option costing £2,000 + VAT. This allows around 3 hours of learning activity. Again, this is fully inclusive of all delivery content and expenses.
Simon has almost 20 years of experience in the higher education sector. During that time, he has worked in marketing, communications, engagement, and events roles at four different universities in the UK: Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick, and Coventry.
Simon began his career in students’ unions. He has been a staff member, student-staff member, sabbatical officer, non-sabbatical officer, trustee, NUS delegate, chair of elections committee, and a member of multiple student societies. In recent years, he has spoken at SU conferences and worked as an SU freelancer.
Simon has a particular flair for designing engaging training sessions, developed through his previous consulting and volunteering roles. Currently, he leads the training initiatives for UniTasterDays, including their quarterly training days in Birmingham, staff training, ambassador training, and 6-week leadership course.
Past recipients of Simon’s training include AccessHE, London Higher, Manchester Metropolitan University, Queen Margaret University, Queen Mary University of London, St Mary’s University, the University of Salford, Zurich International School, and various HELOA regional groups.
Finally, Simon is an international speaker. He has spoken at a range of conferences, including CASE, ContentEd, EFMD, IDPE, FindAUniversity, HELOA, HighEdWeb, PSEWeb, SU Digital, SU Marketing Conference, and Utterly Content. He was Chair of the Newcomers Track at CASE Europe Annual Conference from 2020 to 2023.
To book your students’ union training day, or arrange a call to find out more, please email Simon Fairbanks, Head of Community Engagement, at [email protected]