Good Practices Recognition and rewards

Background Young Science in Transition
SiT wilde meer jonge mensen betrekken, wat heeft geleid tot het ontstaan van Young SiT in 2018. Het doel van Young SiT is om met concrete projecten - bottom up - bij te dragen aan de verandering van het wetenschapsbedrijf. “Young SiT is gedreven door intrinsieke motivatie. Wij zien vanaf de werkvloer waar er verbetering nodig is en willen hier en de wil om met concrete behapbare acties verandering te brengen”, aldus Annemijn.

Good Practice (PhD compentence model)
Young SiT heeft een nieuw evaluatieformulier ontwikkeld om in de beoordeling van promovendi de focus te leggen op professionele groei in plaats van kwantitatieve output. Door de nieuwe evaluatiemethode kunnen promovendi zelf beslissen welke prestaties ze willen benadrukken in hun beoordeling. Verder kan de promovendus zijn of haar jaargesprek nu voorbereiden met een externe begeleider en vindt er dankzij Young SiT voor de jaarlijkse evaluatie eerst een voorbereidend gesprek plaats met de externe begeleider. Hierbij wordt het PhD Competence Model gebruikt; een model dat promovendi laat reflecteren op hun professionele ontwikkeling in verschillende competenties. De uitkomsten van deze zelfreflectietool en het gesprek met de externe begeleider kunnen vervolgens gebruikt worden als gespreksstarter tijdens de jaarlijkse evaluatie met de promotoren.

De ervaringen van medewerkers en leidinggevenden:
Een jaar na het invoeren van de nieuwe evaluatiemethode in een van de PhD programma’s van de Graduate School of Life Sciences heeft Young SiT een kleine evaluatie gedaan. Promovendi en externe begeleiders vinden de gesprekken op deze nieuwe manier verfrissend. Het gesprek heeft meer inhoudelijke diepgang. Door feedback te vragen aan de gebruikers van het formulier leert Young SiT gaandeweg. Door de evaluatie kwamen ze er bijvoorbeeld ook achter dat het PhD Competence Model verouderd was, en hebben ze het zodoende een update gegeven (zie InSci.nl).

Tips voor andere faculteiten
De eerste stap is om awareness te creëren over het feit dat het anders kan en moet en consensus te vinden over het hoe. Verder is het heel belangrijk om nieuwe initiatieven in pilotomgeving in te voeren, te toetsen bij de mensen die het gaan gebruiken, en het vervolgens gaandeweg laagdrempelig te updaten. Daar zit ook meteen het spanningsveld voor de academie: wetenschappers willen vaak eerst bewijs zien dat iets werkt. Ook is kruisbestuiving essentieel. Het gevaar dreigt dat iedereen op zijn eigen eiland het anders Erkennen en Waarderen gaat verkennen, terwijl we allemaal hetzelfde willen. Tot slot moeten jonge academici ook worden betrokken bij het proces. Vaak denken jonge academici dat hun invloed klein is. Ze willen wel meedenken, maar vinden dit ook spannend omdat ze aan het begin van hun carrière staan. Volgens Annemijn is dat nu geleidelijk aan het veranderen. Als je met veel mensen samen ergens voor staat, dan kun je wel degelijk veel impact hebben.

Background Young Science in Transition
SiT wanted to involve more young people, which led to the creation of Young SiT in 2018. The goal of Young SiT is to contribute to the change of how science is practised with concrete, bottom up projects. "Young SiT is driven by intrinsic motivation. From the workfloor, we see where improvement is needed and have the will to bring about change with concrete manageable actions," says Annemijn.

Good Practice (PhD compentence model)
Young SIT has developed a new evaluation form which focuses on professional growth rather than quantitative output when assessing PhD students. The new evaluation method allows PhD students to decide for themselves which achievements they want to emphasise in their assessment. Furthermore, the PhD student can now prepare for his or her annual interview with an external supervisor and, thanks to Young SiT, a preparatory interview with the external supervisor takes place before the annual evaluation. The PhD Competence Model is used for this; a model that allows PhD students to reflect on their professional development in terms of various competences. The results of this self-reflection tool and the discussion with the external supervisor can then be used as a conversation starter during the annual evaluation with the supervisors.

The experiences of staff and supervisors
Young SiT carried out a small evaluation, one year after the introduction of the new evaluation method in one of the PhD programmes of the Graduate School of Life Sciences. PhD students and external supervisors find the interviews in this new way refreshing. The conversation has more depth. By asking feedback from the users of the form, Young SiT learns along the way. Through the evaluation, for example, they also found out that the PhD Competence Model was outdated and so they updated it. 

Tips for other faculties
The first step is to create awareness of the fact that things can and must be done differently and to find consensus on how. It is also very important to introduce new initiatives in a pilot environment, test them with the people who will be using them, and then gradually update them in an accessible way. This is also where the tension for the academy lies: scientists often first want to see proof that something works. Cross-fertilisation is also essential. There is a danger that everyone will explore Recognition and Rewards differently on their own island, while we all want the same thing. Finally, young academics also need to be involved in the process. Often, young academics think that their influence is small. They do want to think along, but also find it exciting because they are at the beginning of their career. According to Annemijn, this is now gradually changing. If you stand for something with many people, you can have a great impact.

The experiences from employees and managers are overall very positive. Employees have, however, get used to how and what to write in narrative style. The promotion committee has to get used to judge narrative style portfolio’s based on quality, rather than on quantity using metrics. Thus, the new policy asks for new competencies of both employees and managers/team leaders.

As tip for other faculties, Marian wants to stress the importance of involving all stakeholders as early and as much as possible. Carefully listening to employees about what they appreciate and what is lacking in career and promotion policies is crucial to generate the required support.

Bart de Waijer (head HR FSW; B.W.A.deWaijer@uu.nl) and Kathelijn Korver (HR advisor FSW; k.korver@uu.nl) tell about their experiences during the interviews. ”The set-up was a great start: we succeeded in putting a stronger focus on leadership and the team during the interviews, while we kept using the current B&O form. The difference was in the preparation of the interviews. We informed professors that we would talk into depth about their role as a leader of a team. In addition, we asked them to gather feedback from a number of employees upfront, which was, however, not compulsory.” The stronger focus on leadership and team allowed for more targeted dialogue about the contribution of team members to the vision and goal of the team.

Currently, one of the challenges is to start translating, together with the professors, this increased awareness about team spirit to the teams. Although the experience learns that there are no direct needs to change the B&O form, it might be helpful to, for example, in the future change the order of the topics such that team spirit gets a more prominent place. In 2022, FSW envisions that team spirit and leadership is on the agenda of each B&O appraisal interview within the faculty.

Liesbeth experienced that within the current WP Flow en UFO profiles more than previously thought was possible to stimulate diversity in functions. With the VSNU position paper in mind, and considering the talent in her department, she wrote together with her colleagues four Associate profession profiles, each with different remits. Two assistant professors were immediately promoted to Associate professor, for the two other positions assistent professors were selected and invited to apply for promotion based on talent and desired career track. Luce Claessens, recently promoted according to this procedure, specifically mentions the social impact and the appreciation thee university has given for teaching and its study program. In addition, she feels more confident in conveying her message as an associate Professor. The most difficult part of the procedure for her was that that there were several internal candidates applying for the same position.

Point of attention in such procedure is, according to both Luce and Liesbeth, the need for transparency and due diligence in communication. In addition, the attendance of an external promotion committee member and a member of HR were also a pre. As tip and inspiration for employees and leaders Liesbeth indicates that at the university often more is possible than we think, but that people need to be willing to take initiative and search for solutions. Luce adds to that the thinking from the perspective of tasks, rather than functions, might create more to the point solutions for employees. This example also shows how long-term strategies can contribute to strategical positioning of a department while at the same time individual career development paths are stimulated.

The experiences of Manon Benders, professor and department head Neonatology of the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, as chair of the appointment advisory committee are primarily positive. The portfolio gives a full overview of the achievements of the candidate in all domains. The risk, however, is that the format forces the candidate to fill in all sections, while not every domain is relevant, or that several achievements categorize under different sections. Recently, Manon is promoted herself from a temporary chair to a permanent position as professor based on the new style qualification portfolio. As a candidate, she experienced that filling in all the details of a narrative portfolio is quite a bit of work. It also made her realize the importance of record keeping, about for example contributions at conferences and supervision of students.  

As tip for other faculties wanting to implement such qualification portfolio Manon suggests to have the candidate start with a personal statement. Here, his or her vision about their professional development and about future ambitions can be shared. With this, it becomes easier to value the different sections of the portfolio.

Contact: r.benedictus@umcutrecht.nl

Juliette Legler invited Aukje Nauta to start the workshop with an inspirational lecture about shame – an emotion that is generally tabu in the work environment, but when you look it at more closely, you realize that it is an emotion that stems from a desire to be a better person. Aukje opened us up to the idea of acknowledging and openly sharing our shame and encouraged us to ‘flip the shame’ to expose the desire behind it and turn it into a strength.

We then embarked on the RoadMapp dialogues, an activity facilitated by Sietse Rauwerdink from ‘de Koers’.  For this, we broke up into groups of 4-6 people, and discussed a series of online questions about Recognition and Rewards (RR), followed by immediately typing in the answers. This format really stimulated creativity and discussion, while forcing us to formulate actions, no matter how small or how big. These actions included: give someone a compliment every day, start meetings with connection at the personal level e.g. by asking one of the 36 questions of the ‘fast friends paradigm’ (the basis of which is described in this article). Other actions mentioned were: develop a questionnaire about happiness at work in order to develop an alternative H (for happiness) index, and adapt our career and promotion policies. 

To really make RR a part of the culture of the department and beyond, a few colleagues volunteered to be ambassadors and are now organizing RoadMapp dialogues in their own teams. These dialogues help to identify specific actions for rewarding and recognizing each other’s talents even more!