Professional Alliance for Learning and Support (PALS): A Pilot Career Development Educational Program for Administrative Support Personnel in Healthcare Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly transformed the healthcare research landscape, staging unprecedented challenges for administrative research-support personnel. While career programs and retention benefits have emerged to support frontline healthcare workers facing health concerns, burnout and employee-turnover, many “classified”/administrative support staff in research departments who experience similar challenges remain without adequate structured support. This lack of structure has impacted job satisfaction, career-progression and talent retention within this crucial sector. Recognizing the critical importance of addressing this training gap for the benefit of the broader research enterprise, the Interdisciplinary Translational Education and Research Training (ITERT) Core at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center established a dedicated program called Professional Alliance for Learning and Support (PALS) in 2023-24. The objectives of this program were to (1) create a career development guide tailored for non-academic research-support staff, bringing awareness to relevant institutional and global resources for professional growth; (2) provide a means for increased staff engagement within the research environment and enable career planning for retention of talent; (3) promote teamwork across the research enterprise and facilitate opportunities for safe-space feedback on work experiences; and (4) enable structured mentoring constellations to enhance professional growth. We conducted a pilot with eight members of the research-support team who voluntarily signed up for this program. These members support research faculty and laboratory staff within the department of Translational Molecular Pathology in diverse administrative capacities. Through interactive workshops, instructional lectures, online courses, and relevant networking opportunities, PALS delivered personalized training, leadership development, functional mentoring and career-navigation tools. Over six months, we explored the critical role of PALS in improving performance, engagement, and facilitating communication between staff and leadership, ensuring that staff concerns were heard and considered in departmental decision-making processes, and in aiding staff to visualize and plan for career advancement. Our findings demonstrate that the PALS program enhanced staff awareness of next steps in relevant career-progression pathways, enabled mentoring relationships and greatly improved the morale (career-confidence) of the participants. We also observed marked longer-term benefits: the program provided direct support and visibility to administrative staff within research environments, consequently enhancing job satisfaction, retention of talent and career advancement, with 100% of participants drafting individual development plans and actively taking on either leadership roles within the department or career promotion within a year. Our study suggests that research departments implementing educational programs like PALS can navigate change more effectively while fostering an inclusive and career-enhancing workplace environment.