New to Career Development?
Do you represent an organisation looking to establish, supplement or enhance the support you provide your researchers in career development? EURAXESS offers its members free, easy-to-use resources and tools for high-standard career development services within organisations.
- Resources for research supporting organisations
- Resources and tools for existing EURAXESS career development services
Setting up career development services in your organisation is easy with the EURAXESS career development model! - Set up EURAXESS career development services
Tools
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A set of accessible, easy-to-use resources aimed at encouraging and supporting EURAXESS Service Centres (ESCs) and Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) to increase their outreach to and engagement with business employers. This includes:
- Resources, advice and information to reach out to the industry
- Good practices in academia-business engagement activities
- Info on the labour market (shared with the Career Development Module)
- Info on high-level skills in different employment sectors (shared with the Career Development Module)
- Flagging EURAXESS services for business employers
All focused on allowing RPOs in general and ESCs in particular to develop their academia-business engagement plans.
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The REFLEX App is an online tool developed to help research institutions and professionals assisting researchers to take a more comprehensive and sustainable approach to the career development of researchers. The tool provides examples of activities that can be carried out to support the professional development of researchers in five key areas: mobility, networking, academic skills development, company and organisational interaction and career development as such.
The tool will help you to:
- Explore which career support services are already available at your institution.
- Build a tailor-made institutional career development strategy.
- Increase the visibility of career support services to your researchers.
Learn more about the tool and how you can use it on the REFLEX project website.
Gender Equality Plans
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What is a Gender Equality Plan?
The European Institute for Gender Equality offers a clear definition of what a gender equality plan is for research organisation and higher education institutions according to the European Commission. It outlines the different steps or phases of a gender equality plan, namely the analysis, planning, implementing, and monitoring phase.
Gender equality in research and innovation is an essential factor that must be prioritised throughout all stages of research, talent management, and policy decisions.
Moreover, from 2022 and onwards, having a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) is an eligibility criterion for all public bodies, higher education institutions and research organisations from EU Member States and associated countries wishing to participate in Horizon Europe.
Find here all the information you need about developing a GEP in your organisation.
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How to setup and implement a gender equality plan?
The following documents present guidance on how to set up and implement a gender equality plan for research organisations to be eligible for applying to Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation 2021-2027 projects.
This Guidance supports organisations to meet the Gender Equality Plan (GEP) eligibility criterion of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation 2021-2027. This Guidance presents the components of the eligibility criterion as set by the European Commission, explains what these requirements mean in practice when developing and implementing a GEP or reviewing the equivalence of existing plans or policies, and provides concrete practical examples, building on existing materials, good practices and various resources that support gender equality in research and innovation (R&I) at national and institutional levels.
The European Institute for Gender Equality also offers a complete step-by-step guide.
The SAGE Wheel Toolkit for designing Gender Equality Plans in higher education institutions is designed to help draft effective Gender Equality Plans (GEPs). The toolkit guidelines provide standards for developing and implementing GEPs as well as self-assessment for gender equality within institutions. It also includes a framework for inter-institutional mentoring to guide the process.
On this website you will find advice on how to draft a gender equality plan. It also offers an excel document to design your own GEP, create the annual work plans, do the follow-up of the implementation and gather qualitative results of the implemented actions.
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Horizon Europe & Gender - Background documents
Learn from the European Commission's factsheets and strategies, about the current challenges related to gender equality and specific actions to reach it. Read about the policy objectives and actions to make significant progress by 2025.
This factsheet provides information on the challenges of gender quality and how to tackle them as well as key tips for developing a GEP.
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Best practices
This is an overview of best practices of projects that range from the assessment of current policies to identifying and tackling gender biases and obstacles towards measures on how to reach gender equality. Also included are projects that deliver strategies to research organisation to development and implement as well as assess gender equality plans.
LIBRA is an EC funded project which brings together ten research institutes in life sciences in ten European countries. Together with the support of an expert organisation on gender, they assess their current policies and procedures to identify gender biases and obstacles.
GENERA is a Horizon 2020 project aiming at continuing, monitoring and improving the Gender Equality Plans of Research Institutions and Organisations specifically in the physics research field.
PLOTINA is aiming to enable the development, implementation, and assessment of self-tailored Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) with innovative and sustainable strategies for the Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) involved.
TARGET is a SwafS-03-2016-2017 Coordination and Support Action funded by the European Commission Program H2020.
The main goal of TARGET is to contribute to the advancement of gender equality in Research and Innovation by addressing Gender-related institutional barriers to careers, decision making and Research & Innovation and High Education curricula content.
SAGE (Systemic Action for Gender Equality) is an EU-Horizon 2020 funded project designed to seek stronger action on gender equality in higher education and research.
The EQUAL-IST project (Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions) aims at introducing structural changes to enhance gender equality in Information Sciences and Technology (IST) research institutions. The project aims to address ERA objectives in relation to gender equality by supporting seven Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) from Northern, Southern and Central European countries, as well as one CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) country in developing and implementing tailored Gender Equality Plans (GEPs).
Baltic Gender is an EU-funded project that brings together eight scientific institutions in five countries around the Baltic Sea to work on reducing gender inequalities in Marine Science and Technology.
GEECCO aims to establish tailor-made Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in four European universities (RPOs) and to implement the gender dimension in two research funding organisations (RFOs) in funding schemes, programmes, and review processes.
Mentoring for change was a gender-integrated mentoring programme conducted in 2018/2019 by the Faculty of Science at Lund University. The report is based on material produced before, during and after the programme, and on the survey that the participants responded to at the end of the programme.
In this blog, a research assistant in the GEARING-Roles project team from University of Ljubljana looks at the meeting between two Slovenian institutions implementing gender equality plans, where best practices were shared, challenges were debated, risks and risk management practices were shared, and inter-institutional support was enhanced.
University of Beira Interior (UBI) was the first university in Portugal to set up a gender equality plan as early as 2011. Since 2012, Gender Equality Reports have been prepared on an annual basis to monitor the progress towards gender equality in the university. The analysis provided in the reports considers the gender balance in terms of disciplines taught and on decision-making and leadership positions, the gender pay gap, the use of measures to reconcile professional and personal life (like flexible working hours), a gender analysis of the utilisation of leaves, and information about the number of students disaggregated by sex and faculty.
Goethe University Frankfurt established the Gender & Diversity Controlling in 2010. The Gender & Diversity Controlling aims at monitoring developments with respect to gender (in)equalities across the university, as well as at providing guidance and support, and monitoring gender equality-related efforts within the 16 faculties (Fachbereiche) of Goethe University Frankfurt.
Case Studies
Having identified some institutions that are already working on career development for researchers, we thought their experience might be useful to those institutions at the beginning of their efforts. You can check the experiences of The University of Copenhagen, VITAE UK, The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, The Polish Foundation for Science and Technology and The Helmholtz Foundation on the right.
Additionally, we have performed some desk research so we can have an overview of the progress in researcher career development in some other institutions. You can check the full review here.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS) at the time of this consultation is in the middle of consolidating their researcher career development strategies.
The Human Resources team, which is part of the Management Department, oversees coordinating all recruitment, career development and gender actions. Their work is supported by the appropriate IT resources and builds upon the HRS4R logo action plan (for 2015 to 2019). This action plan includes among other elements the creation of an advisory committee composed by researchers, reinforces gender policies, and strengthens activities in outreach and public engagement.
The IT platform created for fostering and managing the researchers’ career development by allowing BSC-CNS staff to set annual objectives, be evaluated and identify training needs, which feeds into an annual training plan.
During 2016 BSC-CNS will launch the BSC Diploma of Excellence in Research Skills for all BSC personnel. The idea is starting a unique internal accreditation programme with various grades relevant for all research levels, from PhD students through to Group Leaders. This way, BSC-CNS has developed its own in-house model of research excellence for the different career stages (R1 to R4), and although it is still under definition, the implementation of this diploma will set the basis to assess impact of the career development actions by comparing results from year to another.
The Foundation for Polish Science is largest non-governmental organisation supporting science in Poland and being aware of the importance of supporting researchers in their professional career development to becoming better researchers, they implemented the SKILLS project (2011-2015).
The SKILLS project includes several researcher career development components including standard training courses (e.g., project and team management, commercialisation of research results, entrepreneurship, negotiation skills, public speaking, scientific writing, etc.) but also science popularisation and proof-of-concept competitions, internships (in a research performing organisation or a company abroad), mentoring and coaching sessions.
All these components covered all research stages from PhD candidates to established researchers living in Poland and working in a Polish research performing organisation. In addition, the SKILLS project also includes a career development programme called Academy of Science and Research Management aimed at programme officers and administration staff.
The outputs from all these activities are assessed by evaluation forms and reports following the participation.
The Helmholtz Association brings together 18 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centres and has a talent management strategy supporting scientific and administrative staff that begins through targeted recruitment and continues with a comprehensive support ultimately aimed at further developing their potential.
This way, the Helmholtz Association career development actions target all research stages from R1 to R4, but also non-academic staff on different career levels. These actions include the Helmholtz Leadership Academy, the Helmholtz mentoring programme for young women of the association, the Helmholtz Graduate Schools, or the Helmholtz Research Schools among other activities.
All of these activities are embedded in the abovementioned talent management strategy, and although each of the 18 member centres has its management competencies, all share the same tools and programmes, and exchange information at periodic meetings.
The assessment of the different activities is regularly done by so-called happy sheets, and several researcher tracking surveys have been done (young investigators group leaders in 2011 and 2014), and others are planned for the near future (PhD candidates tracking).
Throughout the entire University of Copenhagen (KU), which includes over 6 faculties and more than 5000 esearchers employed, there are a wide range of researcher career development activities organised.
These include workshops and events; which foster networking with private companies and foreign researchers, cover professional capacities, employability, or language courses; as well as mentoring and management activities covering both the social and professional level of the research staff.
All in all, the main research stages that these activities cover are R1, R2 and R3. Particularly, in the case of the R1, all their activities are embedded in a common strategic action plan covering all PhD candidates of the university. Currently, a cross-faculty group is working on trying to agree on a common researcher career development plan for the rest of the stages (R2-R4).
For assessing the impact of the activities, surveys to the participants of the different activities are used, together with focus groups. On top of that KU also uses the data from the Danish National registry to analyse the impact of their research career development services. Specifically, the University of Copenhagen has been looking into the labour market of young researchers through several tracking studies of its PhD and postdoctoral researchers. These studies produce both quantitative and qualitative data related to their working sector, positions, income, gender, etc., which are very useful for the design on researcher career development initiatives.
The non-profit programme Vitae, is the global leader in supporting the professional development of researchers, understanding these as anyone training or trained in research, whether they continue in academia or use their professional skills in a career outside the academia.
Vitae organises events, co-develops training materials and offers a wide range of online material for researcher development covering all career stages (R1 to R4). It also supports its members in producing their HRS4R logo action plan and is the EURAXESS Career Development Centre for the UK through it is collaboration with Bridgehead Organisation British Council.
Among the online material of Vitae, we find their Researcher Development Framework (RDF) that describes the knowledge, behaviour and attributes of successful researchers. This is a resource widely used by research performing organisations to audit and organise their professional development support to the research staff, as well as an assessment tool for individual needs and progress.
Within the UK, Vitae measures the impact of its career development activities using the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers on behalf the Concordat Strategy Group. In the UK, the Concordat provides an unambiguous statement of the expectations and responsibilities of researchers and their managers, employers and funders, which gives a framework to detail progress on measures related to recruitment and selection, recognition and value, or career development, among other. Most of this evidence is gathered from regular surveys to researchers in the UK:
- Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) to postgraduate research students run by the Higher Education Academy
- Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) run by Vitae to early career research staff
- Principal Investigators and Research Leaders Survey (PIRLS) also run by Vitae to research leaders and principal investigators
Measuring impact
Traditionally, within the researcher development community, most developers tend to be very much focused on developing innovative and successful activities for researchers within their institutions and have little time to focus on evaluation activities.
The outcomes and impact of trainings and professional development actions addressing different skills and capabilities are very varied and range from very direct impact (e.g., satisfaction with the content of the course of participants) to more indirect, meaningful and medium or long-term impact (e.g. actual change in behaviour leading to better professional performance and outcomes), which, to make things more complex, may even be affected by many other factors.
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- Being able to monitor the progress of the principles included in the new Charter for Researchers, including those relating to researcher professional development. Being able to monitor the impact of the European and national policies developed to support researcher career development.
- Leading the behavioural change required for research performing institutions to start offering measurable researcher professional development strategies.
- Identifying researchers´ skills gaps and strong points in the country and developing policies accordingly.
A number of drivers can be identified for Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) measuring impact of research development actions:
- Better tailor the strategies according to the gathered impact data.
- Secure funding and high-level commitment towards researcher professional development based on evidence.
- As practitioners, they inform research funding organisations and government administrations of research career development needs.
- Use impact data on branding material of the institution, showing its commitment towards supporting professional development of researchers and proving its impact on researchers’ career.
- Adjust doctoral training curricula and researchers training in general according to the impact data related to career tracking.
Researchers have a leading role in successful professional development strategies. There is a general agreement that researchers need to take an active role and become responsible for developing their own professional development and careers. This implies there are a number of drivers for researchers supporting impact frameworks:
- By participating in evaluations of research development activities and strategies, researchers can influence future policies put in place after the evaluation of impact data.
- Assuming impact analysis in their own self-assessments, researchers can monitor their own progress against their personal professional goals.
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Kirkpatrick Evaluation Model
This model based on four levels of impact was designed by Donald Kirkpatrick in the 50s to structure how impact could be measured sequentially.
Level 1 – Reaction: solicits opinions of the learning experience following a training event or course. This includes questions such as:
- Did the trainees feel that the training was worth their time?
- Did they think that it was successful?
- What were the biggest strengths of the training, and the biggest weaknesses?
- Did they like the venue and presentation style?
- Did the training session accommodate their personal learning styles?
Level 2 – Learning: measures the degree to which participants acquired the intended knowledge, skills and attitudes as a result of the training:
- Identifying what you want to evaluate (i.e., the things that could change: knowledge, skills, or attitudes.)
- Measuring these areas identified both before and after training.
- Once training is finished, test your trainees a second time to measure what they have learned, or measure learning with interviews or verbal assessments.
Level 3 – Behaviour: measures the degree to which participants’ behaviours change as a result of the training – basically whether the knowledge and skills from the training are then applied on the job:
- Did the trainees put any of their learning to use?
- Are trainees able to teach their new knowledge, skills, or attitudes to other people?
- Are trainees aware that they've changed their behaviour?
Level 4 – Results: seeks to determine the tangible results of the training such as:
- Reduced cost
- Improved quality and efficiency
- Increased productivity
- Employee retention
- Increased sales
- Higher morale
The TOTADO framework
The TOTADO framework establishes four basic levels at which impact needs to be assessed, differing in the unit of analysis.
Individual outcomes: the trainee is the unit of analysis, and the dimensions to be measured include:
- Affective (e.g. participant reactions to training, motivation, self-efficacy, attitudes, mental well-being)
- Cognitive (e.g., verbal knowledge, knowledge representation)
- Behavioural (e.g., off-the job task performance, on-the-job task performance)
- Physical (e.g. health, fitness, injuries)
- Instrumental (e.g., events, actions or status changes resulting from participation in training and development activities that are work intrinsic (increased job control), work extrinsic (pay rise, promotion) or work relational (forming new relationships or networks)
Team outcomes: the team or group is the unit of analysis, and the dimensions to be measured include:
- Affective (e.g. changes in average team identity or trust)
- Cognitive (verbal knowledge, knowledge representation in terms of shared cognition)
- Behavioural (team task processes, intra-team processes)
- Instrumental (events, actions or status changes for the team as a whole such as increased team autonomy or gaining team bonuses)
Organisational outcomes: although many organisational outputs can be obtained from aggregating the individual and team level outputs, some dimensions can only be measured at the level of the organisation:
- Financial (e.g., turnover, profit, share price)
- Outputs (e.g., quantity, quality, variety of components, products or services)
- Processes (e.g., time to complete tasks, communication system efficiency, or any other aspect informing how well the organisation works)
- Resources (human or non-human)
Societal outcomes: impact of activity beyond the organisational level, and thus, refers to dimensions related to an area or group outside the organisation:
- Economic (e.g., R&D investment in the region, sector or country)
- Health and Welfare (e.g., work absenteeism in the region, sector or country)
- Educational (e.g., scientific output in the region, sector or country)
- Law and Order (e.g., local crime rates in the region, sector or country)
Environmental (e.g., pollution levels)
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of Terms
Confused by some of the terminology? Take a look at our Glossary of Terms
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