Training you may not know we run
Everyone knows we do officer training and academic rep training. These are the ones you might not know about. Alongside the staples, we’ve built a set of specialist programmes for the corners of SU life that rarely get their own training, from the officer and staff relationship to sabbatical wellbeing, neurodivergence, panels, mediation, campaigns and organising. Every one is delivered in-house and shaped to your context.
Have a browse. If something fits, or you’d like a version tailored to your team, drop us a line at hey@alkhemy.org.uk or book a call.
Looking after the people who run the union
Working Together: Officers and Staff
The relationship between elected officers and the staff who support them is one of the most important in any union, and one of the most under-invested. This brings both groups into the same room to build clear roles, healthy boundaries and honest communication, and to co-create a working philosophy for the year ahead. Bespoke to your context, not a lecture.
What it covers- Representational and operational roles, and where they meet
- Building healthy boundaries that create trust, not distance
- Communication and the difficult conversations before they become unmanageable
- A shared working philosophy your team co-creates and keeps
#SabbCare: Being a Sabb and Looking After Yourself
Being an elected officer is a job like no other: high visibility, high stakes, and a year that asks a great deal of you. This is a supportive space for sabbs to look after themselves through it, without losing who they are, built with real care for how demanding the role can be.
What it covers- Recognising the unique emotional and professional demands of the officer role
- Practical tools for boundary-setting, managing energy, and avoiding burnout
- Self-compassion, identity maintenance, and peer support
- The internal and external support structures available to officers
- A personalised wellbeing action plan for the year ahead
Leading While Neurodivergent
For the staff who line-manage, support or work alongside neurodivergent elected leaders. It goes past awareness to what you can do in practice: spotting masking and burnout before they become a crisis, understanding how feedback lands, and shaping roles and meetings so neurodivergent leaders can do their best work.
What it covers- What masking costs a student leader, and how to spot it early
- Why burnout often arrives without warning, and its early signs
- Rejection sensitive dysphoria, and what it means for how you give feedback
- Structural changes to meetings, briefings and conversations
- Applied scenario work and reflection
Craft for the harder cases
Advising Neurodivergent Students
Our most in-depth course. Two days for advisers, welfare officers and support staff who work with neurodivergent students regularly and want to go beyond awareness. It is about practice, communication and case craft: reading what a presentation is really telling you, and holding the cases that do not follow a straight line.
What it covers- How neurodivergence presents in an advice context, practically not clinically
- Adapting communication for different presentations and needs
- Designing better advice sessions: structure, environment, pace
- Trauma-informed principles applied to real cases
- Extended role play and complex case analysis
Student Panel Member Training
For student reps who sit as decision-makers on academic misconduct, appeals and disciplinary panels. Most get a procedural briefing and little else. This replaces the briefing note with the confidence and craft to weigh evidence, manage bias, hold their own alongside senior colleagues, and reach decisions that hold up.
What it covers- Understanding the role precisely, what a panel member is and is not there to do
- Weighing written and oral evidence, and asking useful questions
- Recognising and managing bias, including the pull to defer
- Holding your own in a formal room alongside senior members
- Reaching defensible, clearly reasoned decisions
Mediation & Conflict Resolution
When two students, reps or society members fall out, mediation can settle it before it escalates and keep the relationship intact. This gives your team the judgement to know when to mediate and when to refer, a clear process to follow, and the skills to run it well, including the newer thinking on trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming practice.
What it covers- What mediation is, and when to use it or refer
- Understanding conflict and how it escalates
- The mediation process, step by step
- The core skills: listening, empathy, reframing, non-violent communication
- Trauma-informed, neuro-affirming and restorative approaches, plus ethics
Building power and making change
Supporting Campaigners
Campaigns training, self-directed online courses and one-to-one coaching, all built on the LUCIE model and nearly twenty years of running campaigns in hard environments. For SUs and campaigners who want measurable change, not just visibility. A campaign is judged by what it changes, not how loud it was.
What it covers- Campaign strategy and the LUCIE method (Listen, Understand, Change, Implement, Evaluate)
- Organising and empowering supporters
- Sustainable activism, doing the work without burning out
- Getting things done: practical implementation
- Plus online programmes for individuals and blended coaching and mentoring
Organising and Empowering Students: Activate Your Grassroots
For SUs that want to bring community organising into their own context. It equips student leaders and staff with the knowledge, confidence and skills to mobilise students, grow new leaders, and build grassroots activity that outlasts a single term of office.
What it covers- The difference between leading for students and leading with students
- Community organising techniques to mobilise and sustain student-led action
- Identifying and developing new student leaders within your networks
- Storytelling and shared purpose to strengthen participation and belonging
- An engagement plan that supports grassroots activity beyond your term of office
Not sure which fits?
The best starting point is a conversation. Tell us about your team and what you’re hoping to get from it, and we’ll point you to the right thing, or shape something bespoke. No pressure, no obligation.
Book a free 30-minute call Email hey@alkhemy.org.uk