Closed working groups

Career Perspectives

The aim of the working group ‘Career Perspectives’ was to create more insight into career opportunities for young professionals. Besides this, YoungRUG aimed to have a key role in playing a role in the inter-faculty exchange of career opportunities.

In this project, we formulated several questions for young support staff in order to get more information about their wishes, needs and challenges within the organization and their expectations for career pathways. These questions concerned the role of the organization in providing personal development possibilities and career related activities for young professionals.

After analyzing the data from the focus group discussions with young support staff, we decided to look into the manager’s point of view on career perspectives for young support staff within the UG . To do so we held several interviews with managers of (young) support staff in the UG.

Results

We organized online focus groups discussing career perspectives for young support staff. We gathered valuable input and decided to enrich the contributions with the perspectives of UG managers and the Union. Consequently, interviews with managers and the Union representative were conducted. We have summarized these results in a report. If you would like to receive this report, please send us an email (young@rug.nl).

Recognition of support staff

Within the working group 'Recognition of support staff', we aimed to carry on with the recommendations from the Career Perspectives report and act on signals we got as a community for young support staff. Based on this, we saw the need for a more elaborate scheme for the recognition of support staff.

YoungRUG wrote a memo in which we explored the possibility of a name change from ‘support staff’ to ‘professional staff’. YoungRUG has been working on improving the position and opportunities of UG support staff for a while. We began to explore the idea of the name change and its benefits as a part of a bigger initiative to position the support staff within the UG.

Results

The Managing Directors and the HR Director José Weitenberg discussed the memo. Overall, they were positive and asked YoungRUG to look into an alternative to ‘professional staff’. Finding suitable English and Dutch equivalents for describing the responsibilities of professional staff has proven to be challenging. An alternative approach could involve refraining from differentiating between academic and professional staff unless necessary, and instead referring to them collectively as 'university staff'.

Currently, we are anticipating the university's preparedness to embrace a cultural transformation. The implementation of recognition and rewards for professional staff is at an initial stage, and we stand ready to contribute to the programme once it commences.

Seat at the table: YoungRUG advisory council

The purpose of the 'Seat at the table' working group was twofold. First, we wanted to grow the YoungRUG network, both inside and outside the UG. This means we wanted to involve and connect more people, both for informal meetings and for sharing knowledge and professional growth.

Second, we aimed to play an important and active role within the UG. We wanted to have a permanent place in discussions and decision-making with important bodies within the university, such as HR, Faculty Boards and managers. In short, YoungRUG should be an interlocutor consulted for advice and policy issues.

As working group we looked in to the possibilities of being a part of the decision making process on young support staff. We want to me more visible as sparring partner for councils and boards throughout the university. In order to achieve this we met with the Board of the University, the University Council and the Faculty Boards.