The certificate is awarded to research organizations striving to provide high-quality and transparent conditions for its existing as well as newly hired employees. The aim is to make the HR policy of the institute comply with the conditions of the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers(link is external). These include for example open and transparent recruitment of new employees, bilingualism of the institution, equal opportunity policy or employees’ professional development.
“With regards to the size of our institute that has more than 1300 employees working at 34 departments at more than five different sites, systematic care of the employees and their selection is an essential factor in ensuring good results across the whole institute. The gained award is good news for us confirming that we are on the right tract in creating prestigious research environment on a pan-European scale, “ says Michael Prouza, FZU Director.
It is however important to realize that it does not end by gaining the award. On the other hand, to retain it our progress needs to be evaluated in regular intervals. One of the main documents is an Action Plan which summarizes steps needed for the implementation of all the points stipulated by the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers.
“This and next year we will mainly focus on the process of recruitment and selection of new employees and unification of methodologies across all the FZU departments. As we go along we would like to prepare procedures for further HR activities in such a way so that we moved the HR processes in the direction of strategic human resources management,” Lenka Černá from the FZU HR team introduces further steps.
The process of the certificate gaining has been supported by project Improving Quality of the Strategic Management in the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (HR Award FZU) as part of the Operational Programme Science, Research and Education under which also other related activities in the area of international collaboration, technology transfer, and science and research popularization are executed. At the same time we have been focusing on targeted development of managers’ soft skills, mainly in the area of communication and managerial skills, by means of internal translators and courses of English the level of bilingual communication have been increasing and a grant office has been established which provides support to researchers applying for prestigious Czech and European grants.
Detailed information and documents related to the Award (Action Plan, etc.) are available here.
