Diversity and representativeness: two key factors

In the past few weeks many of you have filled out the questionnaire for preparing the upcoming Five-yearly review. Similarly, Staff Association members have elected their delegates to the Staff Council for the coming two years. Once again we would like to thank all those who have taken the time and effort to make their voice heard on these two occasions.

Elections to the Staff Council

Below we publish the new Staff Council with its forty delegates who will represent in 2014 and 2015 all CERN staff in the discussions with Management and Member States in the various bodies and committees. Therefore it is important that the Staff Council represents as far as possible the diversity of the CERN population. By construction, the election process with its electoral colleges and two-step voting procedure guarantees that all Departments, even the small ones, and the various staff categories are correctly represented.

Figure 1 shows the participation rate in the elections. The average rate is just above 52 %, with all departments having participated of a fair basis.

Fig. 1: Participation rate in the 2013 elections for the Staff Council

The table below details the gender distribution for the CERN population and in the Staff Council. It is seen that with twelve woman-delegates out of a total of forty (30 %) women are well represented in the Staff Council. Moreover, at the executive level of the President’s office the Staff Association guarantees full gender parity (three men and three women).

Figure 2 compares three distributions which show how various nationalities are represented. The centre of each bin (red) corresponds to the CERN population, the right-hand side (green) to the members of the Staff Association, and the left-hand side to the Staff Council (blue). Note that the French data are off-scale.

Fig. 2: Distribution of nationalities (Staff Council, CERN staff, members of the Staff Association)

Comparing the two right-most bins (red and green), it is seen that all of the twenty full members of CERN have at least one of their nationals as a member of the Staff Association. Moreover, twelve of those twenty nations have somebody elected to the Staff Council. Therefore, globally speaking, we have quite a fair representation of staff, both in the membership and the Staff Council.

Responses to our 5YR 2015 questionnaire

For the 2013 Staff Association questionnaire 1463 staff, i.e., some 58 % of the total number of staff members, responded. If we consider only questionnaires which are completely filled out, we are left with 1382 (labelled SA 2013 in Fig. 3), which corresponds of a response rate of 55 %. This response rate is comparable to the one of a HR survey in 2009 entrusted to the University of Lyon (labelled HR 2009 in Fig. 3) and compares very favourably with the Staff Association’s previous questionnaires in 2003 and 2008 (respectively, SA 2003 and SA 2008 in Fig. 3), and with the Staff Survey organised by HR Department (HR 2011 in Fig. 3).

As for the results of the questionnaire in question, we have checked that the responses are representative for the whole staff population by studying important key parameters, such as nationality, age, department, career path, gender, contract type. No significant bias has been found in any of these variables, so that our detailed analysis of the answers to the questions asked in the questionnaire can proceed.

Fig. 3: Questionnaire response rates

We plan to come and discuss with you the information that your delegates will have obtained from this study during public meetings scheduled for the second week of February 2014. It is important that on that occasion you come and give us your feedback, which will help and guide us in formulating our demands in the consultation process concerning the 2015 Five-yearly review with Management in Spring 2014.

by Staff Association