Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is committed to being an attractive place to work for both current and future scientific staff, with the aim of bringing out the best in everyone. This means offering our academic staff an environment and career paths that allow them to develop their individual talents and choose the direction that suits them.
EUR also continues actively developing into an impact-driven university while always promoting excellence in our research and education, increasing our positive impact on society, fostering inclusive leadership and, in the case of Erasmus Medical Center, providing excellent patient care.
To support these strategic goals, and in line with the nationwide Recognition & Rewards programme (R&R), EUR has been revising its current system for recognising and rewarding academics, moving from a narrow set of performance indicators to a broader appreciation of diverse talents and contributions.This transformation has been guided by the EUR R&R Framework which was published in 2021. This document describes the guiding principles for further development and implementation of R&R at different levels within EUR.
The EUR R&R Framework follows three main themes (see below). Through these three themes, the guiding R&R principles have been implemented across different EUR Schools. Go to Route towards Recognition & Rewards page to read more on that.
EUR focuses on the importance of, and need for, creating positive societal impact. The Recognition & Rewards programme is fundamental to enabling and achieving this ambition. Therefore, impact-related activities need to be more widely acknowledged and appreciated and made an integral part of the development cycle. In addition, we want to create room for impact-driven career profiles, in which academics develop their research and teaching in close collaboration with societal stakeholders (co-creation), or in which they pursue the entrepreneurial possibilities yielded by their research.
The increasing expectations of performance in the competitive world of science put academics under mounting pressure and may discourage people from pursuing a career in academia. All Schools within EUR have agreed on the need to develop more career paths that allow academics to focus on one or two key areas of activity rather than all five (research, education, impact, leadership, and in case of Erasmus MC, patient care). These alternative career paths should offer scope for a new balance – or mix-and-match – in the five key areas. It will also no longer be necessary to excel in all key areas for a promotion.
Thus far, it has also often been the case that everyone in every team must excel in multiple key areas at the same time, and the focus of evaluation has been on individual rather than team performance. Shifting this focus to team performance allows to mix people with different career paths, and therefore talents, and compose teams that possess all the qualities necessary to complete the required tasks at high levels of performance. Teams also offer more room for specialisation given certain needs and requirements, which avoids the need for everyone to be a jack off all trades.
At EUR, we believe that good leadership and management are necessary and indispensable to be successful in research, education and creating (societal) impact. Both factors are also imperative in the transition to more diverse career paths and to the evaluation of team performance. Thus, working towards a revised system for recognising and rewarding academics and facilitating a culture change needs attention to good leadership and management.
