Recognition of professional staff

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

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.