Title | Category | Target group |
---|---|---|
Labour market information for spouses | Social Integration & Daily Life Family Matters Profesional & Academic Development | Internationals spouses/family members |
Labour market preparation for spouses | Family Matters | Internationals spouses/family members |
Career support for international PhDs and junior academics | Profesional & Academic Development | PhD student/Early career researcher |
Career planning skills trainings/labour market preparation for PhDs/academics | Profesional & Academic Development Networking Institutional strategy | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) |
Academic skills training for international PhD students/researchers/academics | Profesional & Academic Development | PhD student/Early career researcher |
Interdisciplinary summer schools | Profesional & Academic Development Promotion & Visibility | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) |
Institutional small grants available for international PhDs/junior academics | Profesional & Academic Development Institutional strategy | PhD student/Early career researcher |
Career promotion criteria published in English | Profesional & Academic Development | R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) |
Induction trainíng program for new support staff | Institutional Processes Capacity Building of Support & Management Staff | Administrative staff |
Checklists for internal support processes | Administrative & Legal Support Institutional Processes | Administrative staff |
Knowledge sharing intranet communication platform for support staff | Capacity Building of Support & Management Staff | Administrative staff |
Knowledge sharing Inter-institutional communication platform for support staff (closed group) | Institutional Processes | Administrative staff Management staff |
Inter-institutional events/study vistits/job shadowing for support staff | Capacity Building of Support & Management Staff | Administrative staff Management staff |
Top management leadership development and induction scheme | Capacity Building of Support & Management Staff | Management staff |
Study/networking visits for top managers | Networking Capacity Building of Support & Management Staff Promotion & Visibility Institutional strategy | Management staff |
Collaborations facilitating social integration (e.g. administrative procedures, accommodation, language, family issues, socialising) | Social Integration & Daily Life Language Support, Language Policy Family Matters Profesional & Academic Development Networking Administrative & Legal Support Accommodation Safety, Healthcare & Wellbeing Social security, Health Insurance, Taxation Institutional Processes Promotion & Visibility Visa, Residence & Work Permit Institutional strategy | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) Internationals spouses/family members |
Promotion via collaboration with professional networks (e.g. EURAXESS World Wide, consulates, alumni network) | Promotion & Visibility | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Management staff |
Open positions promoted publicly in English via well established international platforms (e.g. for free EURAXESS Jobs) | Promotion & Visibility | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) |
Strategic approach to building a welcoming environment and offering quality support services for international academics | Institutional Processes Institutional strategy | PhD student/Early career researcher R2 - R4 researchers Lecturers (incl. Language Teachers) Administrative staff Management staff |
International scientific committee | Profesional & Academic Development | R2 - R4 researchers |
Title | Description |
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Labour market information for spouses |
Employment is one of the ways to facilitate the integration of foreign academics’ family members. This service will help the target group to acquire basic information about the labour market quickly. As a result, they will maintain continuity in their professional activity and improve their professional portfolio. This may also increase the financial stability and comfort of the researcher's spouses during the mobility. |
Labour market preparation for spouses |
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.
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.
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Career support for international PhDs and junior academics |
Career development support for PhDs and junior academics is an important part of preparation for future employment. The main aim of career development support is to help PhD students and early career researchers:
If there is career support service for researchers at your institution, make sure that it is also available for international PhD students and researchers and that it takes their specific needs into account. As they probaly have neither knowledge of local labour market nor strong professional network in your country they might benefit from availibilty of career advice a lot. Ensuring accessibility of career advice to international PhD students and researchers might help you to:
Final output: career support services available to international researchers and PhD students. Major activities: Examples of such services might include professional career coaching, individual career counselling, interactive trainings, workshops, online navigation tools etc. |
Career planning skills trainings/labour market preparation for PhDs/academics |
One of the reasons why career planning skills trainings are being held is to encourage proactive career planning by equipping participants with the skills, resources and self-assessment information necessary to make informed career choices both inside and beyond academia. Organizing career planning skills trainings and labour market preparation trainings focus on professional career of PhDs and academics who are often uncertain in terms of decision-making for their next future career life. Therefore, the training possibilities for PhDs and academics can help, maintain and improve job skills, professional level of employees and prepare them for possible promotion. By organising these events the HE institutions can benefit in terms of the overall job satisfaction level of their PhDs and academics.
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Academic skills training for international PhD students/researchers/academics |
By offering a wide range of possibilities for helping international research staff (in addition to local staff), including PhD students, develop their professional knowledge and skills higher education institutions enable them to fulfill their potential as researchers, make their stay more meaningful professionally and academically and thus contribute to their professional integration in the institution or the national labour market. |
Interdisciplinary summer schools |
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. |
Institutional small grants available for international PhDs/junior academics |
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.
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Career promotion criteria published in English |
Allotting a space on the institution's website for the list of career promotion criteria could greatly contribute to foreign researchers seeking a more permanent involvement at the welcoming institution. Career paths should be structured, transparent, and clear for foreign researchers.
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Induction trainíng program for new support staff |
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. |
Checklists for internal support processes |
The goal of preparing a check-lists of internal support processes is to collect and describe information in a user-centered manner.
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Knowledge sharing intranet communication platform for support staff |
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.
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Knowledge sharing Inter-institutional communication platform for support staff (closed group) |
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.
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Inter-institutional events/study vistits/job shadowing for support staff |
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. |
Top management leadership development and induction scheme |
Leadership development schemes vary from induction workshops for newly recruited academic staff to mentoring schemes for doctoral candidates, courses in project management, MBAs, job shadowing, general leadership development programmes to more established programmes in higher education. Prior research revealed that offering leadership development opportunities is closely linked to a wider culture of continuous professional development and to existing national legislative frameworks on work environment (Louisa Bunescu & Thomas Estermann, EUA). The reasons for setting up leadership development and induction schemes can be diverse. First, such professional development opportunities increase the level of preparedness of executive leaders at universities. Institutional induction schemes ensure continuity and a smooth handover of responsibilities. Second, they help acquire specific managerial (e.g. financial, legal, entrepreneurial, intercultural, international) competences while on the job and build confidence. Third, leadership development schemes are also an opportunity for higher education leaders to learn how to better tackle crisis management situations, like the Covid-19 pandemic or influx of refugee students. Training programmes on leadership skills are also offered to emerging leaders in higher education, including doctoral candidates in order to prepare them for the challenging roles that they might take up in the higher education sector (Louisa Bunescu & Thomas Estermann, EUA). |
Study/networking visits for top managers |
Networking and study trips abroad provide an efficient tool to boost the overall visibility of a higher education institution, including various opportunities for study and work it may offer. Participating staff members / managers act as ambassadors of their institutions abroad and also expand their own professional expertise and knowledge through the exposure to other institutions' good practice. Prior research found that informal opportunities for learning sliding into the spaces around formal events were often responsible for unexpected and influential perspective transformations and that these opportunities for learning are often undervalued. It was also proven that international study visits where participants agree their own collective agendas and develop a trusted validating community group are more valuable than transmission models of leadership learning (Andy Cramp, University of Wolverhampton). |
Collaborations facilitating social integration (e.g. administrative procedures, accommodation, language, family issues, socialising) |
Social integration, in a narrow sense, may refer mainly to socio-cultural integration enabling the creation of personal connections/networking of international PhD students/researchers/academics, and their family members with their local and other international doctoral and academic fellows. In a broader context, it covers also other integration activities like finding a proper place for living, opportunities for career development, language learning, smooth access to the labour market and education to family members, access to health care, etc. However, also handling all the administrative issues related to relocation (residence permits, health/social insurance, tax, vehicle registration, pets, etc.) in smooth, clear procedures helps a lot for better navigation in the new setting. Being comfortable with the local environment may be substantial to the overall PhD/academics' performance. Often international welcome centres or one-stop shops established by local/regional/national authorities or associations of several HEIs/research organisations in the city can take over many of the mentioned responsibilities, provide services in a structured manner for a critical mass of clients, promote the city/region efficiently, organise various events about life in the country/city, provide labour-market orientation and dual-career counseling services, offer domestic language courses, etc. Here we focus on listing possible partners for collaborations to provide more advanced and higher quality services and a broader portfolio of them. Practical steps on how to establish them are also briefly drafted. Although establishing collaborations with numerous external partners might seem a laborious effort, such synergies might bring fruit in clearer/more detailed guidelines, databases, shared responsibilities, better information flow, and even saved human/financial resources. |
Promotion via collaboration with professional networks (e.g. EURAXESS World Wide, consulates, alumni network) |
Using professional networks could significantly facilitate promoting the host institution HEI as a study and academic/research destination, promoting its strength areas and funding opportunities, and fostering its global presence. This could substantially lead to attracting more of international talent.
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Open positions promoted publicly in English via well established international platforms (e.g. for free EURAXESS Jobs) |
EURAXESS portal is the unique, single point of access to content and online tools, related to relocation of researchers and their families and career development. It hosts an online marketplace of CVs, jobs, funding, and hosting ads, connecting PhD students, academics, and researchers with their employers. It is one of the top science job platforms in Europe - with over a million visits per month, 80000 job ads published annualy, 65000+ registered organizations, and 18000+ researchers. In this video you will find out all you need to know about registering on the EURAXESS portal and start posting your first job vacancies. Publishing job ads on the EURAXESS portal is FREE. It helps HEIs and R&D organizations get unprecedented visibility and reach at no cost, and thus facilitate access to the best talents for the newly open positions. The ads, submitted by the organisations awarded with HR Excellence in Research logo will be flagged with the logo to highlight the highest standards in HR practices in that organisation. |
Strategic approach to building a welcoming environment and offering quality support services for international academics |
Building a welcoming environment and improving support services for international students and staff is a high-level goal that needs to be recognized in the institution's strategies and related action plans. Based on such a strategic approach, institutions could reflect on the topic from a broader perspective related to its contribution to the achievement of the other institutional goals and missions. Incorporating this topic in an institutional strategic plan or internationalization strategy reflects the institution's commitment to these goals and, thus, involves an internal discussion on possible ways to achieve them. |
International scientific committee |
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. |