Recruit - Integrate - Maintain - Repeat: Online

Written by Anastasia Sidiropoulou and Lia Touska Member of AEGEE-Academy and AEGEE-Thessaloniki

During the Local Training Course by AEGEE-Thessaloniki in November 2019, the idea of organising a European School (ES) was born. The newly elected board chose Human Resources (HR) as the topic, Lia Touska took the role of the main organiser and they contacted AEGEE-Academy for collaboration. The event was going to take place between the 19th and 22nd of March. Lyda Michopoulou was chosen as the Training Manager and together with Claudia Chiurlia, Nataliya Khimichenko and Christina Pournara, they formed the Trainers Team.

Two weeks before the event, the coronavirus crisis happened and the Greek government forbade any kind of gathering. This did not stop the organisers. Thanks to Lyda Michopoulou and her valuable experience with delivering sessions online, the event could be held online. The schedule was adjusted to two full training days, Friday the 20th and Saturday the 21st of March.

During the online training course, the participants had the opportunity to discover the HR cycle and talk about the steps in which their teams are right now and how they can move forward. Afterwards, they had a Recruitment session, which as they said was one of their favourites. The participants discovered how to create an achievable recruitment strategy. There were worries about the recruitment process during these difficult times, but many inspiring ideas came up and a lot of motivation vanished all negative thoughts. Also, there was an integration session. “Why do you want to integrate your members?” and “What is integration for you?” were discussed. The trainers gave them some tips for this process and participants were given a space to share their ideas. Another session was Mentoring. Ideas for creating a successful mentoring system within their locals were shared among the participants. One more session was Retention, where the participants learned how to create fundamental interpersonal relations between their members. Furthermore, there was a sharing activity, where participants shared what the day’s sessions offered them.

Additionally, the training course included a Group dynamics session. The participants were given a role-playing activity, where they worked in groups where they had to choose the place of a European event. Moreover, there was a Performance Evaluation and Development session, where they had the chance to learn how the GROW model works and turn the knowledge into practice. Last but not least, there was a Knowledge Transfer (KT) session, where the participants discovered the importance of KT and got prepared to create a successful KT environment for their locals.

The European School on Human Resources 2020 was the first online ES in the history of AEGEE. Ιt shaped 16 H(e)R(oes) responsibles, they are among us and they are here to help the Network be more powerful and connected.