Networking events, be it live or virtual, could help connect PhDs and academics with similar interests, and they could also help them discover different ways of approaching certain aspects of academia life. They could be organized in the form of conferences, seminars, lab meetings, various social events as well as online social networks, where social media profiles of academics can be used for a rather useful purpose. Such events bring people from different fields of academia together, creating opportunities for them to hear about other people's research, and also allowing them to discover different institutions they could visit in order to gain new knowledge. 

Collecting and managing data about mobility could significantly affect the quality of the institutional process related to assisting mobile researchers and internationalization in general. It produces a body of evidence for strategic decision-making, facilitates smooth and effective communication with mobile researchers, provides a framework for a flow of activities related to assistance, and improves the efficiency and productivity of the service center.

• Basic level: Creating a Mobility info sheet (Xls/word file) enabling the contact person to fill in all the relevant data on an incoming PhD student/academic and share it across all the relevant departments involved (IRO, HR, Accommodation department, Library, IT center) before his/her arrival. For details see the example Mobility Data Infosheet.
• Intermediate level: Simple central online application enabling an inviting person/department to enter all the parameters on incoming PhD/academic prior to his/her stay, sending out an auto-generated welcome email with information and access to all university services (online library, pass/card, other electronic services before the arrival of incoming.
• Advanced level: Central comprehensive IT mobility system/database with advanced functionalities regarding task management/work division among support staff members, personal information of incoming, pop-up notification of new arrivals, details on visa/residence procedure, health insurance, reminder of expiry dates of various documents (visa, residence permit, hosting agreement, etc), expected services and interest in social events, information of accompanying family members and their needs, email invitation generation, overview of all the emails sent via the database, indicator of completeness of case, statistics, etc.

The aim of this activity is to pair employees involved in providing services to international academics in a mentoring relationship to foster professional development and career growth while building an inclusive culture and diverse networks. 

The aim of this service is to provide mental health and wellbeing support to all interested international PhD students and members of staff in order to ensure they feel psychologically safe and to enable them to focus more effectively on their professional/academic goals.    

This is a key service for effective social integration of international PhD students, academics, and researchers, especially in everyday life outside the academic context. It is an advantage if the hosting HEI can provide the service within its own resources (by Language Department/ Language Centre) with experts trained in teaching the national language as a foreign language. Moreover, the language department could also offer other foreign language courses.

If the hosting HEI does not have sufficient capacity, partnerships with other HEIs in the city could be formed or HEI should create a database of language schools in the city/region. The starting point could be the existing practice of providing language courses for incoming Erasmus+ students. A complementary option is to explore whether there are any already existing e-learning national language courses and offer them to internationals as an opportunity to get acquainted with the basics of the language even before their arrival in the host country.     

This practice aims to establish additional services and more systematic assistance for better integration of the spouses of international researchers for medium or long-term stay.

• Especially in countries with a permanent shortage of skilled workforce, the spouses can benefit from interesting job offers.
• The international experience and background of the spouses can be highly ranked even for temporary job positions.
• Active networking with key stakeholders in the labor market can contribute to better services.

An integral part of the preparation of the accompanying spouses for the local labour market are local language courses or foreign language courses, in general as well as voluntary activities that could help expecially at the beginning of stay.

An effective tool/forum platform to build up the community of experts. The support staff members can contribute their ideas in the knowledge that will be stored-archived in shared online workplace and can be referred back to at any time. Posting issues and receiving responses will create over time a network amongst colleagues that will be actively supporting each other. It could grow to become an FAQ or Wikipedia-style resource platform for support teams involved in internationalization or even for the other HEI departments/units.

A communication platform designed to facilitate the exchange of information among staff working in various institutions that support international academics and PhD students. Knowledge sharing involves a multi-directional exchange of information resources where each institution is both a donor and a receiver of knowledge. Therefore every institution involved should have the possibility to profit from as well as contribute to the knowledge-sharing platform. A community of experts from across different HEIs and research organisations can be created via such a platform.

Transparency and reliability are one of the key factors of a successful scientific activity. The transparency can be achieved by establishing an international scientific committee responsible for supervision and verification of scientific work. Such committees can be established for the HEI’s projects or units. The committee’s work will  improve the HEI’s scientific staff competencies and will be an opportunity for exchange of experiences and knowledge between the engaged institutions. Working with experts from various countries and institutions will be a way to improve communication and cooperation between the engaged institutions and will also increase the HEI’s visibility. The committee members can also be engaged in scientific staff selection and evaluation processes. The experts selection can be based on the HEI’s international partnerships and HEI’s staff personal networks.

However, the existence of such committee(s) shall respect the relevant institutional regulations and project funding agreement requirements. Nevertheless, although similar bodies might exist as part of the instututional structures, the practice might provide some inspiration about the mandates it can have.

The higher education institution is responsible for ensuring personal safety and security of its employees and students including international ones.

International academics might not be familiar with the surroundings and lack awareness of local risks (e.g. related to accomodation, streets at night, use of transport, health safety risks).

The objective of the international scholar safety support/guide is to provide concise English-language information about off-campus and on-campus risks and guidelines on how to act in specific situations and where to seek help.      

Interdisciplinary summer schools are a rather efficient way of universities and their faculties to introduce international PhD students and academic staff members to the fields of study they could offer. These summer schools could also offer a great opportunity to international PhD students and academic staff members to extend their knowledge on certain topics, introduce them to new ways of teaching certain fields of study as well as to meet new colleagues, and potentially establish connections within academic circles.

Such events are an efficient way for professionals from different HEIs to share their knowledge, exchange their experience and challenges and build contacts and trust, in other words, a community of experts. Better informed support staff, with well established professional networks, inspired by good practices of other colleagaues can provide more professional and motivated guidance.

The events may also include some training part to enhance their competencies (soft skills, intercultural, unbiased communication style), or hands-on activities how to create more internationally friendly institutional environments. The events may include several sessions where support staff participants can collaborate on small tasks and jointly innovate various services (e.g. Orientation week), and suggest new channels of communication, or define practical guidelines. 

A very effective way of experiential peer learning activity through observation and exchange of knowledge is represented by study visits or job shadowing. They can typically have a cross-border character and lead to further intensification or introduction of new services at the home institution resulting in the high-level provision of assistance to mobile academics and building up professional networks.

Many universities already have a fund for small institutional grants to support their local PhD students and young researchers in developing various transferable skills (e.g., writing a project/project and financial management of own project), and in preparing future interdisciplinary, international, or cutting-edge projects. Such grants can be used to cover e.g. travel costs, attendance fees for conferences, extra publication, dissemination and science popularisation costs, extra fieldwork, extra lab costs/consumables, individual trainings, etc. Those grants could be offered also to international PhD students and young academics under the same conditions as their local peers.  Information on grants should be available in English and easily foundable on the institutional website. The information could be part of the welcome package.

One of the most frequent obstacles is the lack of human resources to participate in different types of research projects in the country. Attracting and retaining highly skilled researchers may help to bring new expertise and skills and also to create and maintain research and business relationships. Promoting international mobility of researchers is for the host institution and inevitable part of maintaining them later in the country which may result in overcoming labour shortages and boosting entrepreneurship in knowledge-based sectors in the host country.

The practice includes collecting relevant information and providing it to international researchers and PhDs in a structured and user-friendly way. It is important to envisage a regular update of the information in case of changes in the legal framework, national or organisational specifics regarding recognition of diplomas, study periods, educational outcomes, etc. 

This practice will save the support staff effort and time when providing information and support in view of the above.

The main benefit of this practice is that this kind of training improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the support staff work. It also increases the levels of satisfaction of the end-users such as researchers in mobility, international PhD students and academic staff.

This training should be offered to all newcomer staff. It will enhance the procces of introduction to the newcomers and shorter the time for their integration.

As a result the newcomers will be able to engage in the process faster and deliver high-quality service, improving their capacity for the job.

Preparing and circulating a Glossary of common phrases used in welcome processes for support staff and its regular update will raise support staff's awareness of the institutional processes related to welcoming incoming researchers, academics, and PhDs. It is also likely to increase the level of their confidence in dealing smoothly with the most typical needs and expectations of incoming researchers, academics, and PhD students as well as following the institutional rules at the same time. 

This practice is best implemented in collaboration with the HEI management structures, the institutional legal matters office and language specialists.

It is also a good idea to consider having the Glossary multilingual rather than maintaining it in English only.

International students and researchers often face a broad variety of legal issues during their stay in a host country. Professional legal advice can be rather costly and therefore not accessible to all scholars, particularly for early stage ones. Free legal advice offered to international scholars can help resolve and prevent difficult situations that could require more time and resources, compormise their security or cause reputational damage to the institution. 

The FAQ section/page with well-structured quality content organized by relevant topics/categories and easy to navigate is a useful way to organize valuable information that incoming academics often ask. The FAQ page offers a lot of benefits, including:

• Provide quick/standardized responses to recurring questions helping thus incoming academics efficiently navigate through administrative duties and other topics of their interest.
• Reduce the time the HE institution's support staff members need to answer often simple questions.
• Reduce a lot of stress of incoming academics since they receive clear information to make the right decision and move.
• Improve your incoming academics' experience.
• Increase the institution's online visibility on Google and other search engines.
• The FAQ section usually draws most of the traffic.
• Could help in set-up of future chatbots

The FAQs platform is a practical tool for storage of practical information and good practices for processing the agenda of incoming PhD students and academics. It´s a database of standardized responses/solutions to recurring questions helping thus the support staff members efficiently navigate through administrative processes/issues they typically encounter. It is particularly useful for newcomer support staff as well as for situations occurring just sporadically. It could be part of an internal knowledge-sharing platform or any other type of intranet.