GAP Analysis Action Plan

Thank you very much Lana for your very kind introduction.

It's very nice to be with you today and to contribute to the dissemination of the HRS4R process. I think it's a process that is really important for the researcher and we all know that the, let's say, well-being of the researcher and also the opening and the positivity for their career development is really of importance for our institution and also for contributing to let's say the construction of the European Research Area.

This is my first slide, to remind you what you are contributing by working on the HRS4R process. For sure you are working on the development of your institution and so on and we will go back to this question but what is really important is to remind you that at the early 2000s we can say 2005 the European Commission was really aware of the development of the European Research Area based on the openness of the market to the research. I think that if the project is to develop Europe, due to the different let's say context we have in our countries we have to try to have a possibility of moving the researcher from one country to the other one. And the Commission and the European Union, they focused on this aspect of opening the market not only for the researcher, for all the workers we can have in Europe, but it's very important to have a Europe that can develop and reach the same level we can say of excellence, of quality, of richness, of development and so on. So that's why this three items I wrote on the slide are really of importance: the era objectives priority 3 are to develop an attractive open and sustainable European labour market for recreating and retaining researchers in environment conclusive of effective performance and productivity it's very, what I wrote in red is really of importance because as you will contribute to that it will be important for the Commission for you to show that you are answering those questions, you are working on the recruitment, the environment, the development of performance and thus offering sustainable career development system for researchers at all career stages. Very important for you to know that they invest themselves a lot in the research and after having or completed their PhD the problem today in Europe is how to continue with this really wonderful job, how can they work and also develop their career in companies, so you don't have only the academic world.

And the last thing that is really of importance is the participation of women in research because we know that we have to try to develop the possibility for women to have a carrier and a lot of difficulties, and perhaps let's say equality, is still to be developed in our countries. We cannot perhaps address today the question of dissemination, of openness, of open science and so on, but it was not in the written in the first text but we can think that for developing conducive environments of performance, dissemination and a very quick dissemination of the results is really of importance. So for those who participated in Mary Kate’s webinar have already heard what I will say but it's important for the other one to hear a little bit about the award.

So the award is just like a contribution to the ERA objective. Very early in 2005 the European Charter and Code was really the founding documents that was really of importance. So what are the rights and the obligation of the researcher, how can the member states develop and help to reach those objectives written in 40 principles and in 2005 many institutions signed and committed with the principles of the Charter and Code but they forgot to write an action plan and to develop their own actions. But the Uk, because at the level of the United Kingdom they developed the Concord that was a group of 80 universities and associations and so on that worked together in order to reach the principles and implementation of the principle. Unfortunately, the other Member States didn't really react to the Charter and Code and in the evolution in 2010 the European Commission suggested to deliver the award HR Excellence in Research to those who commit with a process for the development of the action plan. That's what the HRS4R process is, a tool developed with the help of different experts in order to help the institution to embark in the system, but really embark in the system, not only commit with the principles and all that. Okay so it's really important to remember that this process is on a volunteer basis, t's not mandatory to have the award, however it's of interest to have it. Why? Because you know that you have the famous Article 32 in the model a grant agreement, this article says that all the institutions who benefit from European research funds have to provide evidence or to demonstrate that they work on the improvement of the working conditions of the researchers, so you can keep in mind that if one of your professors let's say is partner or coordinator of a European project he/she will have to provide evidence that they worked on the career development of the researchers and so on.

What is interesting is to provide this evidence at the level of the institution so once you can give it for all your researchers you feel better and they will feel better in doing research what is their job not to provide evidence of evolution of the system, so it's a voluntary process, it can be done at the level of the institution, it should be done at the level of an institution for the benefit of the researcher who participate in the European programmes but also for the benefit and for sure for the benefit of the researchers themselves who are in your institution.

And we will come back to this question of the benefit, so I don't know if you can see the mouse.

So the HRS4R process is just like a cycling process and you grow in implementation, you become more and more close to the principles and the first step, the initial step is what we will speak about today.

So once you've endorsed the principle of the Charter and Code, and it's very important to be supportive and to commit with this process, you will apply for the award and you have three steps: you have the step of the gap analysis, the OTM-R checklist and this will be the next seminar you will have at the end of October, but it's just like a gap analysis of the recruitment procedure and you will have to write an action plan. After having granted the award you will have to implement your action plan and you agree to be submitted to an evaluation by peers on a regularly basis of three years and that's what is there in green and in bloom.

Okay so we will speak about this part here today, what are the essentials of the process, the commitment. You have their 40 principles and some of them may apply to your context because some of them are more devoted to founders or to employees, but we know that in universities or in research centres generally we are employees of the researchers. The process suggests you proceed with a gap analysis. What does it mean? You compare your practices to the principles to define an action plan in order to better match the principles and fill the gaps. It is mandatory to publish your HR strategy and your action plan in order to disseminate and to be attractive and to show to the researchers that you are working on their country. The key words here are really of importance.

The process is cycling and it's mandatory to involve the stakeholders, you have to work on the implementation. It's not enough to have an action plan and then to fall asleep. The action plan has to be coherent, the action plan is devoted to fill the gaps you've identified in the gap analysis to provide evidence of your progress. This is the principle of the evaluation and also to show that you are ambitious it's not just for having the logo and all that, and we will come back to all those questions during this presentation.

The commitment letter is the endorsement of the principles. I still say it and it's important to commit also not only with the principles by saying “okay those 40 principles will be my guidelines, I agree with the principle even if some principles sometimes are difficult to apply” but the board of your institution agrees with the process itself, so it means to agree to be submitted to an evaluation periodically, but also to do it for the best, for the benefit of the research. Okay so it's interesting in the commitment letter to write about your motivation, it's just not only to sign a written text if you have something to send to the Commission and to say “Okay I commit with this principle, I commit with the process, I will strongly support it” and if you can write motivation it will be of highest value. The requirement is to have it signed by the highest level of the institution. Why? because they will be the first supporter of what you will do as an HR manager and it's very important to do it and during the whole process to have the support of the board. Why? because those actions are to be implemented and very often it's something of importance for the institution, not only for the benefit of the researcher but for benefit of the institution. But it's required big effort to try to develop those principles. You cannot, alone as an HR manager or a researcher, try to work on this as a question of flexibility of network or work on let's say, permanent contract work, on giving the opportunity, or improving the system of supervision, the evaluation of the research. It needs absolutely to have the support of the board for trying to progress and to increase in efficiency in this kind of process.

So the commitment letter has to be sent to the European Commission and once you wrote your commitment it's just like the start

of a 12-month period when you will have the opportunity to develop your gap analysis and your action plan so you have an example on the EURAXESS website so the access platform of what can be a commitment letter, but you can write it yourself.

Why 12 months? because 12 months it's enough for developing your action plan and for submitting your application. Very often, at the early beginning of the process and the period the institution took one year, two year, three year to develop their action plan. It’s not possible to do it. If once you decide to jump in the process you have to work on the process and 12 months is in my experience really enough. For doing it if you need more than 12 months it means that the commencement is perhaps a little bit too weak or perhaps can you also meet some difficulties at the level of the institution, for sure, but the people from the European Commission, from the Unit, Michele and so on, are really open to the discussion with the partners, so you can always write to them and explain if you have and if you meet any problem. But it's also good to say to you 12 months it's enough so you will devote human resources to the process, and it's a question for the institution for how long how, many times shall I have to devote this kind of resources for submitting the application and for starting the process? 12 months it's good enough, three months it's a little bit too low period for doing it, but generally I think that institutions can really do it between six and nine months if they work hard on this process.

Okay the principle of the gap analysis is to compare your practice with the 40 principles and it's very easy: you will describe your gaps, you will do your analysis, you will compare what you are doing with what is the principle and you can also give your idea and your actual and potential initiative for improvement. So you have some templates on the website of the European Commission where you can find how you can do it. So very easy, you have the number of the principle and they all have number you have four automatic areas and for all the principles, principle by in principle you will write “this is where I am this, is where I can go”. And it's very important because it

will be for your institution. The reference of where you are and where you would like to go and the good ideas you have, so because when you will implement the principle you will have to define actions for sure. But you can also refer to the gap analysis and it's very important to keep in mind that you have gaps. What are the gaps and also to refer to this let's say basic analysis you did at the early beginning.

Okay involvement of research is really important, we will go back. Questions evidence gender, ethics, OTM-R and open science are really important in the analysis because these are the weaknesses we have generally in institutions and it's the key for having science

Open, for having a research mobile and for having also high quality in research and in recruitment of research.

Okay, about the process. How can we do the gap analysis? First of all set up a steering committee to oversee the process. The steering committees is made of different experts, if possible searchers why not other stakeholders. All these that will be involved in let's say being the pilot of the systems and the reference for having some possibility of discussion and also bring back the work of some working group. You will work under the four thematic headings, for those who are less familiar to that watch the templates to fill and you will see what are the four thematic headings. And OTM-R is one fifth thematic headings added to the principles of the Charter and Code and it's very important to know and to be clear on how you will proceed and how you will work with the different let's say groups you can have, because in the system what is mandatory is to work with researchers, and we will come back to that.

Okay the gap analysis is done with the researcher, why? because it's not a top-down process, it's a bottom-up process. So you or me or

some people, the HRS4R manager or the director, the president of your institution, has to rely on what the needs are of the researcher. We cannot make the people happy by saying, you have to listening what they need, what are they constrained and how we can improve the working conditions of the researchers. Both can have good ideas for sure but the researchers can also say what are the priorities for

their development and what is of importance, of interest, concern for their well-being but also for their increase in competencies and

also carreer.

Okay so the gap analysis for me it's very important because it's a reference, it will be your reference for action so it means that sometimes you have to stop and go back to your gap analysis by saying “okay, is it still true, do I fill to the gap, do I have new gaps?”. I can tell you the experience in my university when we did our first gap analysis the first principle is on freedom of research and all the researchers say “oh yes we are free to do research, we can do anything we want in research…” Ten years after, we already discussed about the gap analysis because we have some problem of competition between the researchers with each other, and some of the young permanent researchers say “yes, okay, I'm free but only in the topic of my supervisor, of the head of unit, so I don't feel so free to define myself the methods, the subject, the topics and the project also I can write for research”. So it means that 10 years ago freedom

was not a question it was not a gap, but today freedom appears to be a gap for the young researchers and we have to take it into consideration because they have to develop their career and they invest themselves in good research and quality of research. If we would like to be creative and innovative we have to take it into account, is it a priority for my institution, that's the question of the priority: shall we mention this gap as an action?, shall we do something for filling this gap? It can be a decision with the researcher but also with the board of the institution.

Okay so the gap analysis is also the basic documents the basic documentation for providing evidence of coherence and ambition, so if you can write that you have only one gap freedom in research and you say “so I will work and do my action plan on, let's see, flexibility

in the working hours of working time”, we can say there is something that this doesn't match between the gap and the action, so coherence and ambition is really important. What you have to know is that when we speak about publication of the gap analysis, the gap analysis is done for you, it's your institution so it's very important to keep in mind that the gap analysis can be kept confidential. I say “can” because it's your volunteer decision, it's your decision to put it all on the website or not. What is mandatory it's to provide the

gap analysis to the assessor for having the opportunity to estimate about coherence and ambitions, but it's not mandatory to publish the

gap analysis on your website. Why? because it's really if you do it and if you are doing it, honestly it can be really difficult and touchy

to publish what are your weaknesses, the strengths, it's easy to play and easy to publish it but not the weaknesses, so it can be kept confidentially it is not mandatory to publish the gap analysis on the website, so it’s, I know that it's a question it is of importance for many institutions this is not mandatory this is not required for having the award to publish the gap analysis. But to publish a summary of your

strengths and weaknesses per groups per thematic groups and it's part of the action plan so the gap analysis is your basis for your

work, for developing your action plan and it's very important also to sometimes to come back to your basics in order to see

where you are and to have an estimation for being efficient.

Okay, so as you heard in the previous seminar with Mary Kate on the involvement and the engagement of stakeholders and researchers, I will go very quickly on these questions, but it's one of the basics of the process. If you don't involve the researcher and you don't provide evidence that researchers were involved in the process you will not be awarded the HRS4R for sure because it's the basics of the word as I still said it, it's for reaching your objective, it's for developing your institution, it's for having a researcher that have some possibility of career as researchers, and it's really important to start from their needs. So you have to involve all researchers and by all researchers we speak about PhD students, and it's a question system in some countries very difficult, for instance in UK but they left Europe so to speak. About PhD students involved in this dynamic for the European Union, the PhD students are early stage researchers, so i have to forget to say PhD students, we can say PhD researcher or early career researchers and they have also to be

involved in the process. You have to involve researchers from all levels so all researchers mean also that you have to bring in the

process and to ask and to involve in the process all the different persons who are working in research all means each of the researchers

normally have a voice and can express their needs and their concern. For sure we know that it's on the volunteer basis and we can have some questions when we are doing survey with only 10 percent of answers from researchers to the survey you can also involve other stakeholders if pertinent, you can have groups association, you can work with your spin-off, you can work also with your funders, it

depends of your type of organization and you can use different ways of consultation, you can decide to work for writing the gap analysis, you can decide to work with working groups, you can make surveys, you can have focus groups, you can have face-to-face interface discussions, you can have and organise some meetings and so on. So you are really free because the gap analysis is a status of where you are, who you are and depend of your organisation for the evaluation as evaluator we will never let's say we will never say that you didn't use the good way of consultation of involvement of the research if you can explain why it is of importance and why it's much with your context so different way of consultation, but you are free to organize and to do it for yourself depending of your context.

Okay so be pertinent and coherent with your context if you have association of researchers work with the association of researchers, if

you don't have association of researchers or if you have a very small structure choose another way of consultation. I've read some applications of a research centre where you had only 10 researchers, why do we have to organize a survey, an online survey with only 10 researchers? Perhaps can you have open discussion with all your researchers if you have a very small structure, okay be open to

all researchers concerned, so it doesn't mean that you have to answer all the concerns of the researcher you will have to give priority but you have to work with the priority with them, it is more important to speak about maternity leave for instance or paternity leave today or is it more important to speak about the supervision of the PhD student.

The process is a cycling process you will probably spend 100 years for being let's say fully compliant with the principle of the Charter and Code and you can involve but you will start with significant actions and you will register all the gaps. Okay if the different levels of researchers have different concepts you have also to consider those countries so you can understand that it's not the same let's say

difficulty a PhD, an early stage researcher have to face than a dean of faculty but the dean of faculty they also have needs for and the improvement of their working conditions. I did a meeting in France the last year and it was really interesting to speak with the vice return because the vast rector themselves as researcher within the institution they also have concerns they also have needs and when they speak about the needs it's important to take it into account at least as important to take into account the needs of the PhD students or

the false docs and so on okay so depending of your context you will consider the different levels so report of that many people do surveys and they analyze the results of the survey for the five thousand researcher all together so no you have women you have the guys you have PhD students you have for also postdocs in the postdocs you have some permanent wrist performance position some other ones that are still with permanent position do they have the same needs? do they have the same concern? how can we help them to have better condition, how can we write the gaps and also collect the good ideas? If you use survey please report perfectly on survey results and also design to the survey results as adequately as possible for me it's not a good survey to ask the people using that we are compliant with principle one “do you think that we are compliant with principle two and so on”. The survey has to make sense for the institutions and the sense is not always to ask if we are compliant with the with the different 40 principles of the charter and code.

So we welcome back to the questions and thank you for those who wrote it on the chat so we will speak a little bit more extensively on the action plan that many of you forget, I don't know so I can see that you are more or less 60, 61, 62 participants to this conference and I don't really know where you are in the process or if you are only interested or still working on some of the aspects so it's important to remind you that the reference is also not only the process, but also the European Commission decided to write some templates in order to help you to answer the good questions and facilitate also the explanation of your different information. So on the website, it not the website HRS4R access platform you will see and you can you can find all the templates you will have to fill and you have to use those templates. I’ve seen I think it was three months ago one application with the templates we have in 2010, so the templates are evolving the reference is the it tool, so the platform where you have to write the answer to the questions but who you have also a copy of the questions in a doc file on the website of the HRS4R platform. So it's very important to rely to those documents.

Okay so the template on the action plan asks you first of all to explain and to give some few words about your context. You have to give

some information regarding your institution and to describe your structure it's very important because at the end of the process you will be assessed, evaluated by experts who do not really know about who you are so if we would like to, as an expert, to understand and to verify and perhaps to give you some advice regarding what can be or what could be your action plan we have to understand who you are, the organizational information is one of the way. The second one is what you will say about your structure if you have eight researcher or 10,000 researchers, if you have different sides, if you had mixed research unit with some other institution, if you have any European Projects or are only working based on for instance the foundation or something like that we can understand that your priority, your gaps and your possibility of actions can be different and it's very important for you to explain those questions, so is it important for

you to deal with the question of gender if a part of our of your university, or your research centre is in Saudi Arabia. So it's one of the question and I still have to face this question. Why don't they speak about gender if they have some part of their research done in southern countries of the world? This can be of interest and we have those questions in mind when we are reading your application so in this part of the context you have to describe your actual strengths and weaknesses regarding the group of principles, so that's the part of the gap analysis that is published.

Regarding for instance the working condition, the social condition, our strengths is to give social security to all the researchers not only to the permanent researcher for instance. In Belgium is the case to PhD students, they receive salary, the postdocs they receive salary, we have no researchers that are not submitted to social security, but those coming with their own grants from their countries and they cannot be submitted, this can be a gap so we have to explain that in the actual strengths and weaknesses, because we can perhaps choose to deal with some of the of the questions. Okay so it’s very important also in this part of the of the action plan to give some elements regarding your priority and your strategy, that's why we say that the embedment of this action plan in your internal strategy that has also things to deal with governance. With the third mission, with the teaching and so on but how do you embed this action plan as part of the internal strategy? It refers also to the question of the commitment and we know that we change and sometimes we have some president or a rector elected for four years so after four years you have big change in the new priority so, how can we continue? How is this process embedded in the life of the institution? It's very important to mention that and it's very important because you can

explain it to the evaluators but we can also explain it to the world because the purpose of the HRS4R is to be attractive, is to show that you can be attractive for the researcher so those who would like to apply to your institution, who are interested in working with you they can refer to this document that will be published on your website. So this context, who you are it's really important and you must use the website pages on HRS4R for explaining that with all the possible links for sure with your internal strategy.

So about the design of the action plan I say that you have the template and you have to describe the action so that action must be an action and I will give you some examples, and you have also to fill the gaps, you can have actions that do not refer to the gap analysis for sure, for instance you don't have any principle regarding the communication of the HRS4R award to your researchers but it can be an action because if you would like to have the researcher involved in the process you have to communicate about your success, on your initiatives and so on. It can be an action so you can have actions that are not related to the gaps, but you have to have the most important part of your actions related or designed for filling the gaps. All the gaps no because if you have 100 ideas we are sure that you cannot develop all the ideas within two years, so you have to take into account that you have two or three years for the development of the action that the is cycling, so you will update your action plan, you will update your gap analysis also, it's not mandatory but it’s better to do it and you will have to develop it for this period and to explain the development you will have within two or three years, on the two or three year basis.

Okay so the timing is provisional for sure but it's important to know when you will start when you plan to complete the action to arrive at the end of the action and also the duration. Very often we can see in submission that we have one semester of this year but we don't know if it's the start, the end, a new tension and so on. So having a good chronogram and you can add on the edit tools on pdf file for better describing some elements, you with a chronogram you can see when you start and if you have too many actions so it's a question of the management of a project and I think it's very important to think that when you will implement the project of HRS4R, the action plan you will have to think in terms of project when you think in terms of project you have to know what you will do actions, when you will do the action, who will be responsible for the development of actions and how you will measure your progress so that's what we are requiring in the action plan. So the responsible must be operational so you can say that the president of university will organize an event for the training of the researcher or for a discussion on ethics and so on, should he be really the actor of the implementation? That's the question, responsible okay, “but my director is possible of everything in the university”. Sure will he start to work operationally on the questions or not? Who will be the people who will collect the information, who will organize the sink and who will help to measure progress indicators? It’s one of the things that is really difficult for us as evaluators. The indicators can be really fuzzy indicators in something that is specific and that will enable you to measure your progress or completion or quality but at the very beginning it's important to have indicators that then can track, registry and measure progress and it's not so easy sometimes to define the indicators, I will come back to that.

And you have the last proposed action, principal timing responsible unit indicators, targets this is the objective or the beneficiaries of the action so indicators and targets is not the same thing. Indicators is for the measurement of the project and the target is who will benefit from the research. I will show you an example of what is good and what is not good in terms of actions. This is taken from real cases the action is described as we should improve funding of free, young researchers in order to increase their participation to international conference. The gap referred to the principle number 38 okay and the timing is 2021 second quarter. Okay well is it the start or the end? is it the completion date? we don't know but they will stay during two years reflecting to this question and the responsibility will be the academic senate and board of governors so probably the gap is that many researchers say that they need some fundings for going to conference okay but what about the indicator? In in this sense is it the number of people who were not able to participate in international conference and who will go to international conference? is it the amount of the funds given, the number of beneficiary? so this is the line, so you can understand that is it a good action do we have to tell the action in this term in this uh let's say in this sense it's questionable is it a good action for sure it's answer one of the gap but the description the responsible and the indicators even perhaps the timing is questionable.

Second one reference to the priority tree raising awareness of employees of ethical rules and regular adjustment every year they will try to see if the researchers are really aware of the code of ethics, do they know about the code of ethics for instance? So who is responsible of doing that? direct rate the departments and the council? So you have many responsibilities many people involved in the process, okay and what is the indicator of the target, knowing the code of ethics? so it means that the indicator is the action but this is not an indicator okay so you can see that something can be explained. What would you like to do, when, who will be the people who will

be the responsible, but it's not only the responsibility, the engine, the people who will do it, who will help to develop and how shall we measure the awareness of employee of ethical rules. Very often we can see “okay we will put it on the website”, okay but how many people are watching the website? how can we estimate that they know about the code of ethics? These are all the questions we can have in mind.

I will show you a good example this is an action that it is to revise the orientation of new or initiation induction of new employee, principle 24 starting from Q3 2013. “Starting” so we know when they will start, we don't know when they will finish but we know who is responsible HRS4R manager. And what about the indicators and the targets? So did you discriminate between target and indication? Target is to have new orientation procedure and skill implemented so it's clear that's their objective. The action is to revise the orientation and the indicator is the number of participants in the session and the feedback from the participants so we can expect them HRS4R manager to collect information regarding the number of participants and also for the collection on of their feedback, so they can progress and they can evolve. And this is the weakest part of the application received today, is this description of action in term of actions, in terms of answering concern, answering objectives, and being well developed and also well tracked. And the explanation of the tracking, this is let's say the most difficult part I think in writing the action plan. So remember that the action plan is cycling that you have to be pertinent and realistic, the word was not done in one day, okay not all gaps have to be filled within one year or within two years, you have to be coherent and ambitious: coherent between the action plan and the gap analysis but also coherent with what you are as an institution if you have a difficult context it's important to take it into account. So as we are hosted by friends from Croatia, I can say that in Dubrovnik during the last two months, the question of importance is the questions of the highest price for the housing and the city and it's something that can block some process for the development of the researchers and so on, so they have pointed this question as being of importance and they have to adapt their action plan given their context. I was also in some institution where some questions were a change in the law for enabling or for allowing research to do some activities. It’s very important to work on those questions so you have external factors like the price of the housing you have external factors like the low income, you cannot change or can try to change but you can also have internal factors because you can also decide that you are an institution that has not a lot of money for improving some working conditions of the researchers. In my university we cannot create kindergarten for instance, it's not possible but we miss kindergarten seeds or bats in our surround so it's of second priority we have some things to do first for the well-being of the researcher and we can discuss of that with the researcher for sure give priority and involve stakeholders in the company in the prioritization is very important because they can speak about their concern but they can also discuss on the priority and it's very important to have this joint discussion.

Ok last but not least make links with other current actual strategies in your institution so if you can say that in the action plan you will not deal with the question of gender because you have another gender action plan but you have to create the links and you have also to refer to the progress they are doing in their action plan that you have to explain it's possible to have embedment of different strategy and to present it to report on the main achievements of the other strategies, You can use your website for explaining it, okay about implementation. That’s is what you will have to do once you will have the awards, to implement the action so it's what you will do practically for developing this action plan, for implementing the action so you have to track report to organize first of all the structure and how you will do it? You will track progress so that slides are really important that you have to define it from the beginning for sure, for being able to collect information, you will have to report on progress and you will have to do it with the researchers so to keep the researchers involved it's a challenge but this efficient organization is the key for the success of your action plan and also for your reporting and every three years you will be requested to stop, to have an overview of what you are doing and to report to the European Commission on your progress.

Three years it's not enough, the stock you will have, and the self-assessments you will have is it's important to stop and to meet the f the different stakeholders every year or every six months depending on your organization because you have to meet the people and to know how you involve and every year you can and it's better to do it it's a recommendation to every year you can stop update your action plan because you know that the priority can change, the information can change, you can have different people involved, you can have different priorities depending of your context so you can update your action plan. I suggest to watch on the gap analysis in order to see if some new things emerge and are necessary to push at the top of your list of action so the process is involving and keep in mind that you are not doing it for the European Commission, you are not doing it for the level, you are doing it for the benefit of the researchers who belong to your institution or who can come and be interested in being a member of your institution. What are the difficulties regarding the gap and action plan? I still spoke about the difficulties, these are all the items that are there above coherence, ambition, involvement of a researcher and explanation of how they are involved.

Implementation, efficient implementation and also the definition of the indicators: First of all write your action plan and your gap analysis for being understood by the people who will read it, so you know that some people are really using a lot of abbreviation, it is very difficult to understand the abbreviation and for those who will read your submission or your action plan to remember and to keep in mind 50 new abbreviation… That's typical of the French, so you have to describe your context, your priority you have to let know, about you and you have to write for being understood one good advice is to write if possible directly in English because sometimes you have translation of your national language and it's very difficult to have sentences that make sense so use very singular sentences with a verb with a very short structure for being understood. So you know I'm not so good in English, so I'm French speaking I can also speak some other language but when I’m speaking I make errors, I know that but what is important is that you can understand what I mean so and it's the same and when we have no contact when you have no discussion you know return on the education question we can only rely on what you are you are writing and sometimes we miss information and if we miss information we have to ask it to you, and it's a delay indeed in the awarding of the process. So please explain who you are and write for being understood, demonstrate.

Demonstrate it's a word in English that means that you have to prove the involvement of the research it's not to give evidence it means that we have to be sure that the researchers were adequately involved in the process and you have to give us some proof of that. It means this is the survey, these are the results of the survey, we are taking this kind of information from the survey, we had focus groups

we met several times, our minutes are available there and so. You have also to demonstrate that you are coherent and ambitious you are doing the thing for the best, not too much not the rivers, less ambition in the process. If you say that you only miss some trainings for the top 10 and for the Nobel prize in your institution it's difficult to believe that it's your only gap and that is your ambition it can be an ambition but it's perhaps that some things can be of importance for the researcher that can be put on the top of the list, involve researchers on a long term it's difficult at the early beginning you will have some conversation with the researcher they will think that the process is very good but you have to keep them involved in the process. But Mary Kate spoke about that during the first meeting.

Define indicators and collect data. It's not enough to have good indicators, the existence of something, having a file on the website for me it's not enough for being sure that all the people are aware of something, that know about the process and so on. How can we collect data, how can we define the indicators? When we say that the researcher they miss awareness of something, so all they miss knowledge and how can we estimate, evaluate that they are trained that they acquire knowledge, that they are aware of something by counting the number of visits on the website perhaps you have to convince the evaluator that it's a good indicator and maintain documentation for looking back. So you will not see on the HRS4R platform that it's mandatory to have an update of the gap analysis but it's a very strong recommendation is to maintain all the documentation you have for having the opportunity to go back to your basics and to show your progress so if you can look back you can say what is progress if you are going and from progress to progress to progress you forget what was at the start of your reflection and your actions. You have to publish the HR Strategy and the gap analysis and the action plan.

What does it mean? It means that you can do it with your own words but we have to find on a visible and dedicated age the information regarding your HR strategy, so it means your context, your weakness, summary of your weaknesses and your strengths, your priority and the action you would like to do. This is more or less the template of the action plan, you can publish the template as is you can print your template from the IT tool but it's less visible and you can also use your own word and your own structure but we have to find this kind of information of the website. As I said it before it's not mandatory to publish your gap analysis but you have to communicate on your HR strategy for research, your objective and what you plan to do, okay. So it's important to do it also and to show that you are proud of what you are doing with your research the publication is not only a requirement, yes

[Music] we have can someone please mute the microphone somewhere, sorry I can do it so I turn her microphone off.

So you have what you can publish and what you are publishing on the website is just like a visible page open to the world, so it's important for your internal community but also for the external community so you have to do it for the best you have to be proud of what you are doing and it's not just a requirement form the European Union he wants to you to explain your research, to embed the action plan in your HR webpage or in your research page and so on in order to show that you are taking care of this process, taking care of the needs of the researcher and would like to improve their working conditions okay so and it's important to have a well-designed page and not only a page with a link to the action plan okay so be proud of what you are doing tell the world about your strategy but also about your success and your progress show that your researchers are involved that you are answering their concern and then they can also keep in touch with some people who are working on the process and you can show also that you contribute to the expectation or to the ERA to the to the European Research Area with ambition and an objective.

Many of applications are refused because of lack of fabrication of the HR strategy and it's difficult to know why, probably because you say so “yes but it's probably a draft of my action plan so I will not put it on the website directly”, but you women will miss three months you will be required more modification, you will have some feedback and some changes so do it and take the risk to publish directly when you submit your application if you feel bad with the risk to take you can be inspired by other institutions, so you can watch the other website because we have today more than 500 institutions who are awarded so who published that published their HR strategy so have a look on what the other are doing, how they proceed, how they wrote their action plan. Be inspired in term of publication but also in terms of writing the action plan and being transparent on the process and sometimes some institution doesn't make it enough visible so it has to be first of all on the internet not in the internet we have to find it easily from your let's say website and very often we don't know if it is in research, in human resources, in which items and so on so the link is not so easy to find and using google engines or using any web engines it's better to be able to find it very easily so use the HR hashtag HRS4R because by typing the name of your institution HRS4R you can find the information and serve on your website publish all what is important for helping to understand and to give visibility of what you are doing, that is very good and that is embedded in this action plan. So you can publish minutes of meetings you can publish a link to your institutional strategic plan to other part of the website and so on and you have very good examples you can find by typing HRS4R in any search engine on the web.

Two final comments one on evaluation. We speak about evaluation but in English we have another word that is assessment and we refer to be assessor than evaluated because evaluation is a judgment of quality we do not judge your action plan we are watching what you are doing and we try to understand what you are doing and if it rely on the spirit of the implementation of the Charter and Code principles we are not alone to say this is a good action or this is not a good action we can say this action is not fully coherent with the gap it's not enough described or is not enough nature for being really or for leading to an successful implementation, but it's not a judgment, it's a command for helping you to increase in quality and possibility of implementation. This is an assessment and we use this word unfortunately in French we don't have this word we have only evaluation and it's very important to understand that we are not as evaluated as judge but we are peers who would like to help you to develop the process for the well-being of the researcher and for the creation of ERA, okay so I prefer to be named as an assessor or an expert than an evaluator. All the assessors are peers so we have the same concern, we are working on this question in our institutions so we know about the process we are trained for real being really well aware of all the questions and it's very important for you to know that the peers are there as assessor and they know what they are speaking about. We commit also with our contract so it means that our contract is to revise honestly your proposal, to make comments to respect the agenda because once you submit you would like to have some feedback on your submission as soon as possible we keep the information confidential and we declined to revise the application if we are in conflict of interest participant to the same consortium. I had a question because we belong to a project of European university and one of the university in our European university project was submitting their applications so I declined to revise this project. We are working by three with a team leader and it's important to know also that all of us provide our individual say evaluation and then we discuss all together for making our recommendation, okay so we are there for awarding you not for not awarding the HRS4R logo.

My very final recommendation is that the process is there, many institutions today are driven by having the award but not by doing a very interesting HRS4R strategy for the development of the career of the researcher in their institution or those who can they can attract you have to do it for yourself, you don't have to work on such a complex project only for having or retaining the award, it's very important in this context to remember that we all in our institution are taking care of our manpower: the researchers we are all doing a lot of interesting and important things for the benefits of the researcher and the work and the stakeholders and why not asking for being recognized for what we are doing? And it's something that's the award can offer. Be coherent, ambitious and realistic and you understand that it's not possible to work if you don't have those three conditions on the floor manage the project as an institution project and it's one of the benefits we can have institutionally is to work with the other administration for other services, work with the researchers and so on.

So the benefit is not only for a researcher it's for the whole functioning of the institution and if you work on that as an institutional project you will have the opportunity to develop it on the long term but also to be partner of the order on the same and common transversal program and for the HRS4R manager and for the institution to be able to recognize this kind of benefit, something saved by all the institutions, benefit from the involvement of the researcher because the researcher they are really aware of their working condition and then they contribute. It's very important for them to share the opportunity to work for the benefit of themselves. The institution and the other one it's also really motivating for them and tell widely what you are doing and that you are doing it right, it's very important be proud of your award be proud of seeing what you are doing through this project.

Once you have the award all the work start and you have to implement you have to self-assess you have to go update your files or your initiatives your actions and as said by the Spanish proverb: “More growth in the garden than the gardener knows he has sown”. So t's very important to be able also to recognize all what is existing at the start of this project and we have many things to describe and the researcher will tell also about that.

I'll give you the presentation with all those links, these are the links that are available on your access platform and where you can find the information.

MODERATOR: Isabel if you agree we can start with the questions, we don't have a lot of them but okay. We have some questions on gap analysis and the first one is from Sinead: she asks, is it mandatory to do a full gap analysis every three years if items are completed and no further action required, do you have to repeat each item in gap analysis?

SPEAKER: officially it's not mandatory to do it. If you were awarded before first January 2017, the procedure was different and it was not mandatory to analyse principle by principle it was on human lottery to make the summary, but today on the IT tool you have to fill and you have to report regarding every action and the gap analysis. So and it's a question would it be more convenient to proceed to a new gap analysis and to refer to this upgraded strengthen process for myself I think it it's better to do it because you will speak the language of the assessors, so if you speak with people that were trained 10 years ago you will have different reference we have to adapt to what is the current situation with the gap analysis and with the IT tool and the current situation is to work with the files that are in the IT tool, it's not mandatory to do it but you have to keep in mind that it's a very big difficulty for the assessor to evaluate coherence and ambition if you do not provide the gap analysis so for me it's better to do it but it's not mandatory, but if you don't do it you will have to explain it widely in order to be understood by the assessor, so I think that you don't have, it's not military to do and to proceed to the gap analysis it's not mandatory to update your gap analysis but you have to demonstrate that you are coherent with the gap analysis but it's impossible to verify it so it's a weakness and you have also to keep in mind that while you are evolving you have a trend to refer only to your list of action but not to the gap that motivated the action and we can see after eight or ten years that those who were awarded a long time ago they refer to their list of action but did they forget that they collected 50 more action 50 more ideas that were of importance, but that were of second priority so that's why my personal recommendation is to watch on your regularly on your gap analysis by saying “okay but we forget that we had this kind of problem in this kind of bleed of the researcher” because you can have diverging way of work that will lead you to forget the essential that was written in your gap analysis so for me it's not mandatory but it's a strong recommendation to do it like that and when you arrived at the renewable step in the IT tool you will have to write on your action and to refer to the principle and to re-explain why you are doing those actions so a strong recommendation if you can do it is to proceed to a gap analysis or to make an update or to re-describe what are your main gaps. So I think that we are flexible on this question so for me it's not mandatory I am flexible but I have to understand your way of thinking, your evolution, your progress, your basics and so on. And it's difficult for us the work is difficult when we don't have the gap analysis updated.

MODERATOR: Okay thank you. So we had a similar question from Jolene so I hope this question was also answered to you as well and we have one more question from sandra who says, do you foresee to do questions for the survey for example for the researchers in the gap analysis?

SPEAKER: when the institutions are doing a survey very often they rely on the results of the survey for writing the gaps or for deciding about the priority of the action, and we have to understand how they proceeded to the survey and how they extract the information. I will tell you something that happened in some application so the questions was “do you think that we are compliant with the ethics, the principal analytics and do you know about problem of ethics in the institution?”. They decided to deal with the question so to create an action if at least 50% of the researcher say no to the question of the ethics, so do you know about problem of ethics in the institution 33% of the researchers say “Yes we know about problem of ethics in this institution”, less than 50% so we will not deal with the question, it's not the gap this is mean misunderstanding of the question this is a miss a bad analysis of the results of the survey so that's why it's important for the assessor to know about the question to know about the gaps and to know about how you deal with the question. 50% of the PhD students say that they have problem with their supervisor, and the answer of the institution was “yes but you know the young researcher say that he has problem so it's a bad problem, they don't know what is a good supervision we will not deal with the question so it means that in terms of well-being of supervision one PhD student say that it was a problem and the institution decided not to deal with this question so it means that this survey was not really well designed or the way of interpretation and the analysis of the results was not pertinent and we have to know about that so if possible and it's always possible put and let's say you gave the possibility to join pdf file to your submission this will be kept confidential so you do not publish the result of the survey but it can be good also for your research to know about the results so you can put it on your website why not if your website is the communication tool with the researchers why not write the summary of the of the survey so they will be informed of the of the success, they will be involved and they will stay a part in the process. So I think that once you have an analysis and very and generally the institution does it very well do it strong they have a report why not publish the report as a joint file to the submission so it will be kept confidential or a summary that can be made available on the website for the researchers

MODERATOR: Okay thank you. So for the action plan we didn't receive any concrete questions but if you agree I have one on the side for you.

SPEAKER: yeah for sure

MODERATOR: Ok, you as an assessor for many years and you might have mentioned it already during your presentation but maybe it would be good to emphasize one more time, in your experience what are the most common misunderstandings when setting indicators in accordance to the actions and the timeline?

SPEAKER: I think the misunderstanding is on the action. So very often the action is described as an objective, I would like to have the researcher knowing about ethics rules okay this is not an action I would like to have the researcher aware of the action is what I will do for obtaining this result, the target is to have the researcher aware of ethics code, but practically what shall I do for reaching this objective? I will write a short explanation, I will make a folder, I will have some training, I will send postcards… I did it to be sent to all the researchers at the beginning of this academic year on ethics “So remember that ethics code exists, watch our website, and we wish you a very good and a very happy new year in the academic year”. So we can do that, this is an action, this is practical action so and the question is, did the postcard I will send it and they will receive it, will they be aware of the code of ethics? Not necessarily, I don't know about that, but I can also in a survey or in satisfaction survey or at the end of some trainings ask the people what do you think about our

awareness to the code of ethics? And we can have this kind of action so I think that the most difficult thing is to say okay we would like to reach this objective and what will be practically done and the responsible of the action if you ask the vice director for research he will say I would like to have all the researchers aware, okay but how will you define your action and how will you measure that? Because we need other things. That soft interpretation of the situation we have some researchers say that they have problems with the methodology and the analysis, how many researchers would like to attend to training? you can you can ask this question so how is it possible to train the people? shall we make it mandatory? if it is a volunteer basis you will not reach the same target then if you made it mandatory, how can you verify the increase of the competence of the researchers? In the analysis of data in making research data management plan these are all questions that are on the floor so what is the practical things and how will you be able to give arguments and to give evidence that you are progressing and evolving and many applications have many actions, that is the writing of flyers, regulation putting

some files on the website, but we do not solve the questions of having more people train by putting information about sending an email and we all know about that, so I think that's it's the most difficult thing you have to reflect on the action plan and this is a progressive, a cycling process so it means that you can start by saying okay I would first of all put information, write the guidelines put it on the website and then how shall you track the awareness or the competency? It’s the grow of competency so and it can be a second step but you have to describe the different step so that's why I think that the use of some tools like the chronograms can help to say this is my objective and these are the action and the progressive action we will implement for reaching my objective. And I always say, we can think is not an action to do. What shall you do what are you doing in the mornings? And it's a question of being clear on action so I’m saying that that is ask you to do something but not to reflect to think.

MODERATOR: Okay, so maybe just to ask you something on the completely other side then, what about the applications and we encounter these situations also often what about being too ambitious?

SPEAKER: I think what is important is to do it for yourself. The risk of being too ambitious is the risk of failure of everything. If I would like to get married with a guy that is beautiful, young, and rich I think that I can miss any opportunity I can have to get married. But if I clearly defined what are my objectives and agree also that time give the opportunity to grow in the action it's also always it's also good the first action you will you have to point and I always say the first action you have to put on your action list is to celebrate the award when you will get it, it's the first action and it's very important to have action that will have success and it will be complete it was within the period you are on the first two year and if you are in the first period and the three or the one after that and every three year you have to say to your board and to your research within three years we will complete that okay and if I put on my action plan all the researcher I’ll have a permanent position I know that in 50 years not all the researchers will have a permanent position because we do not give a permanent position to early stage researchers and it's sure so but we have to work on some aspects that can have success and can help us and can push us to new action that will be successful and I think that for the ambition I’ve seen in one of the last application 65 actions, and the ambition of the university was to have all the action completed within two years, my reaction is “you are dreaming, it's your dream but you will not succeed and if you start all those action all together you will have zero success within two years so select the ten most important one for you or the 20 more important one to you”, okay so that's a question of the ambition and if you describe your context we can also imagine what is the ambition changing the law for making it mandatory for the university professor to do research was the question in one of the institution I had I had to visit and it was the key for starting to evolve in research in the university. One action can make sense within a period of two years only one action but you have to do it at the end.

MODERATOR: Okay, great. And we have just one more question on the publications also from Sinead. So she asks in previous submissions we used to put on the website the strategy action plan and the gap analysis too but I realise that are not required with the new online tool is it better to put the version on the website?

SPEAKER: What is the most interesting for you depending of the culture of those who will watch your website, it's my answer. So the website has to be clear, has to show that you are progressing that you are taking care of your choice for our award or strategy and you have also to do it according to the culture of your institution and I’m sure that here in Belgium we will not present on the same way that they will do it in other countries. I think that the culture is different and what is important is to be coherent with what you are so using the template that are provided on the European platform it’s easy it's convenient you have only to make a print and to print it and to put it. But if you want to explain it because it's more didactical it's more educational it's more important for you to show it and to show and to provide information to your researcher and worldwide you can do it so for me it's not better to have one or the other one, and personally I think it's better to have a tail made than to have it standardized, but I’m not sure that all the evaluators share that same opinion because it's more comfortable to have it in the same scheme for all the presentation, but I think that it's your freedom to do it as you would like to do it but some elements are mandatory is to explain the HRS4R strategy and for the explanation it's your context, it's your strengths and weaknesses and it's your plan and your action plan so and that's why it's completely what is today in the in the action plan templates that you fill online so I would like ask perhaps ask Anca some questions or perhaps to give her the floor for some comments she makes on the chats so and is it possible for you to make a summary of what you wrote or you prefer I write it.

EC: Hi everyone can you hear me? Hi, sorry I won't put my camera around because I wasn't planning to intervene. Isabel asked and I can’t say no to Isabel. So basically just to synthesize what I wrote on the chat, first about the templates. The word templates that you find in the policy library, I know they are not an exact copy of the fields that you have to fill in online that is why we encourage all institutions not to use those templates, those are for guidance and orientation only, so when you start filling in your action plan, your gap analysis, it's important to start online and in the online forms you can save a draft so it's not necessary to do all the application at once you can save a draft and then come back to it later. There is another trick that many institutions don't know, when you right click on any field in the gap analysis or in the action plan you have the option to print and when you click “print” you actually have the option to save

the document as a pdf, so if you want to share it with some other members of the team or have it for your own purposes you can actually save a pdf version of what you wrote so far. However, sometimes you know the boxes have a scroll down bar at the right hand side so you won't be able to see everything you wrote if your text is very long and you have to scroll with the bar, it might not be very evident what I’m saying now but when you are in the document itself, you will see it's easy. And for the other question about the revision of the Charter and Code, it might be that someone from the task force is already online but just to say that there is a task force for the ERAC standing working group on Human Resources and Mobility and that they're working on a on a proposal to revise the Charter and Code to update it more you know in line with new emerging challenges and new developments such as open science or gender and so they are working on that now there it's at the member states level and I think Lana is part of the task force and basically the Charter and Code will not be revised when their work is done of course there were the work of the task force is very important in the revision of the Charter and Code, however the timeline is much bigger than that and we at the Commission we are also launched a study on the ERA

priority 3, on the policy measures such as newer access and HRS4R and the based on the results of this evaluation study which will be completed hopefully around may next year and on the work of the ERAC standing group then we can start working on the actual revision of the Charter and Code so it will take much longer so at this moment we are not able to say anything about what's going to happen and whether there will be a revolution of Charter and Code in code or just an evolution taking into account new developments and new emerging challenges. So I think that's all from my side, thank you so much.

MODERATOR: Thank you Anca, very much. Okey so Isabel I think we don't have any more questions, any final remarks from your side?

SPEAKER: No, no, thank you, thank you very much, I think we answer all the questions, so do not hesitate if you have any question to send it to Lana or to send it to me so we will put the presentation on the on the website. Perhaps can you give some few words about that and I would like to thank you all for the time you spent to listen to me, it was a pleasure to share with you, I think it's one of

the richness of this process is also to have a network of peers and to work with colleagues, and thank you very much for your interest

MODERATOR: Thank you Isabel for your most valuable experience and for sharing it with us selflessly so thank you very much once again, it was a very insightful webinar.