Our faculty has received the HR Award certification. The award is presented by the European Commission to research institutions that make a concerted effort to create an international and transparent working environment in tune with international trends in science (HRS4R).
The Faculty of Social Studies is the first social science faculty in the Czech Republic to receive the HR Award certificate and we are one of the seven newly awarded faculties of Masaryk University after the Faculty of Science and CEITEC. We have joined the community of 594 organizations that have been internationally recognized for HR Excellence in Research.
This European Certificate of HR Excellence in Research is awarded by the Commission to research institutions that are committed to increasing the prestige and attractiveness for researchers internationally. Thanks to the HR strategy HRS4R we want to improve the quality and care for our staff at FSS and thus create conditions for everyone who participates in excellent research in the social sciences. In this way, we also want to attract more foreign researchers.
The HR strategy is based on the 40 principles of The European Charter for Researchers and The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers that focus on ethics in research, open recruitment, appropriate working conditions, and the professional development of employees. The specific activities that the FSS has committed to over the next two years can be found in the Action Plan of the faculty and in the Gantt chart. Three activities from the Action Plan will be implemented over five years.
This is how the whole process of obtaining the certificate went:
The application letter to the European Commission was sent and an HR Award working group was established
A questionnaire survey administered among the staff
Three focus groups on the topic of discrimination were conducted
Materials and documents for the European Commission were prepared
Action Plan, GAP analysis, OTR-R checklist were uploaded to the EURAXESS portal. All documents were approved by the steering committee.
The HR Award certificate was received. The project working group begins to implement the Action Plan.
And what awaits us now?
“Winning the HR Award is a great achievement for the faculty. But this is where all the work begins - by April 2023 we will deliver the Faculty Action Plan to which we have committed. What does it mean? We will financially support the further professional development of our employees, create an adaptation plan for new employees and a gender equality policy. We will also support work-life balance and plan to develop internal communication so that it provides better information and is bilingual. We will create a regulation for the evaluation of non-academic employees. And that is just a selection of what is in front of us now. And we're going for it at full tilt.”
Gabriela Vybíralová, the manager of HR Award at FSS MU
By April 2023, we will be implementing the Faculty Action Plan, which was developed based on a questionnaire survey conducted with all of the faculty staff. Our five-year commitment is to create a mentoring system, define the postdoc position and identify the amount of work per full-time position. To obtain feedback on these processes, we will again reach out to our staff in the form of satisfaction questionnaires in the autumn of 2022, or you can send them to us at: hraward@fss.muni.cz.
Thank you for helping us improve!
On the first day of June, the Faculty of Social Studies hosted an international workshop focused on the Russian-Ukrainian war and the perspective of Central Europe. The event was organized by the University of Southern California and the Department of International Relations and European Studies of the FSS MU.
On Friday, May 12th, the Office for International Relations organized a barbecue at Špilberk for international students studying at FSS. The event was a great opportunity for the students and teachers present to enjoy the nicer weather than the forecast had predicted and spend a fun and relaxing afternoon together.
