Ombud's Corner: fellows and students – a win-win equation
The hundreds of Fellows and students working at CERN bring precious new blood into the Laboratory. At the same time, CERN offers them invaluable work experience that will have a significant impact on their future careers. It is important that we all work together to make this a win-win situation with lasting positive effects for all concerned over the years to come.
Fellows and students are just setting out on a great professional adventure. Some of them are very young, others are a bit more experienced … and what happens during this early period can have vast consequences on their approach to work and indeed on their overall careers. They all come here with their hard earned skills and a high degree of motivation, ready to make the most out of an internship at CERN.
Sometimes, they are called to integrate into well-established units; at other times, they are asked to join complex collaborations. Almost always they have to deal with new information, new cultures, new techniques… CERN is a demanding work environment, rich in diversity and exciting challenges, a combination that can be quite daunting for all newcomers, and even more so for those who are discovering the work experience for the first time.
Effective guidance is key to the success of any work experience. New colleagues, usually at CERN for limited amounts of time, need to be given clear directions and well-defined deadlines as well as broader information about the context and the challenges at stake. This is of course the job of the supervisor. It is also important to ensure that newcomers are well integrated into existing teams and that they are made to feel welcome and able to contribute rapidly and effectively to whatever is required of them.
This guidance becomes even more essential in the case of Fellows and students where we have a primary responsibility to help them to develop and grow into their professions. It is of course important, in assigning them to projects and tasks, that we check their understanding of what is expected of them and that they have the necessary competencies or training required to do the job. It is, however, additionally important, with this particular population, to be available to them, to build an atmosphere of trust where they feel encouraged to ask questions or seek advice and to follow up regularly to ensure that they are continually learning and gaining from these work experiences in ways that will be meaningful to them in the longer term.
Unfortunately, with all the pressures of work that we face, we do not always make this additional aspect a priority and, as a result, Fellows and students are sometimes left to their own devices and can end up feeling lost or out on a limb with no clear guidance or support. This leads to situations where they perceive themselves to be treated like the fifth wheel in the team, sometimes called in to do odd jobs without clear longer-term goals; at other times left alone facing a difficult situation or caught in a cross-exchange between more senior people who are engaged in technical debates that are beyond their sphere of responsibility. On some rare occasions, it may also happen that they are assigned to tasks that are simply not compatible with their profiles or beyond their means. Of course, many of these situations can be avoided through regular communication and feedback, but it is understandable that this is a step that Fellows and students do not always feel able to initiate. Supervisors and colleagues therefore play an important role in making life easier for the younger members of the team by maintaining an open and steady dialogue, helping them to learn from understanding the bigger picture and enabling them to work independently in the knowledge that support is available whenever needed.
A motivated and well-oriented younger generation ensures that excellence is maintained over time. With a positive work experience at CERN behind them, these Fellows and students will go on to become the leading scientists and engineers of tomorrow – as well as the best of ambassadors for our Organization.
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