Results of the Human Resources survey Purpose On the 14th of December 2015, the Working Group (WG) on reforming the evaluation and recommendation system reached out to alumni to get their input on human resources in EYP. The Human Resources survey was a google doc form with questions about alumni’s background, knowledge and opinion about feedback, evaluations and recommendations. The WG reached out to alumni to be able to create a proposal that was tailored to a large pool of people from diverse backgrounds and with different levels of experience in EYP. The survey was posted on facebook, the alumni platform, the Board of National Committees’ (BNC) e-mailing list and in the EYP newsletter. The survey had 421 respondees from more than 35 countries. The survey was open from the 14th of December 2014 to the 15th of January 2015. The WG was set up by the BNC in autumn 2013 and has, in its current composistion, been working on a proposal to present to the BNC at its meeting in spring 2015 since autumn 2014.
Main conclusions 1.
People who have attended International Sessions in a team leader or official position tend to think recommendations are more important than people with other backgrounds in EYP.
2.
96.7% of survey takers stated that feedback is important (19%) or very important (77.7%). Feedback seems to be of huge priority for alumni.
3.
The majority of survey takers felt that the current system is not at all efficient (10.5%) or not very efficient (43%) in upholding a feedback culture.
4.
The majority of survey takers (63.9%) agreed that the current system is unsuccessful in ensuring all alumni receive feedback after attendance in an EYP event.
5.
The majority of survey takers (58.7%) think the current system is unsuccessful in ensuring all alumni who deserve a recommendation for an IS official role receive it. Most prevalent reasons stated were because of the uncertain thresholds and requirements at different events and team leaders’ ability/willingness to submit recommendations.
6.
Only 27% of people who have received a recommendation have also received separate feedback. Bearing in mind recommendation are usually written for a third party to read, even people who have received recommendations miss out on valuable personal feedback.
7.
A large portion (47.3%) of the survey takers knew nothing or very little about the practise of feedback, evaluations and recommendations in EYP. Participants and alumni need to be better informed about this.
8.
Feedback is more often not provided than the contrary. Only 27.4% of survey takers stated that they received feedback every time (3.3%) or most of the time (25.4%) when attending an EYP event.
9.
A majority of survey takers (56%) who have received feedback felt the feedback received was useful every time or most of the time. 5.5% of survey takers who have received feedback had never received useful input. In most cases when feedback has been given, it has been useful for the receiver.
10.
Among the people who have received a recommendation, the number of people who had never received useful input (10.4%), was larger than that of people who never received useful input in feedback (5.5%).
11.
Although the lack of a recommendation was a prevalent reason for alumni’s unwillingness/inability to apply to an International Session, other prevalent reasons included lack of funds, bad timing of the International Sessions and interest in attending other types of sessions instead. Not all people who receive a recommendation/evaluation want to apply to or attend an International Session.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
Background of survey takers Country
Gender Female Male Other
222 194 4
53 % 46 % 1%
Involvement in EYP (time) 3-5
between one and three years between 3 and 5 years more than 5 years more than 10 years
197 136 79 8
1-3
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
47 % 32 % 19 % 2%
Delegate experience Never IS Less than 3 3-5 times 5+
I have never been a delegate I have been a delegate in an international session I have been a delegate less than three times I have been a delegate between three and five times I have been a delegate more than five times
10 234 104 255 42
2.4% 55.6% 24.7% 60.6% 10%
I have never been an official I have been an official in an international session I have been an official less than three times I have been an official between three and five times I have been an official more than five times
56 80 72 62 230
13.3% 19% 17.1% 14.7% 54.6%
Official experience Never IS Less than 3 3-5 times 5+
Team leader experience Never
I have never been a team leader I have been a team leader in an international session I have been a team leader less than three times I have been a team leader between three and five times I have been a team leader more than five times
IS Less than 3 3-5 times 5+
123 32 100 78 129
29.2% 7.6% 23.8% 18.5% 30.6%
Feedback, evaluations and recommendations Knowledge about evaluations and recommendations Survey takers were briefly explained the concepts and system of evaluations and recommendations, with links to the procedure. They were then asked to rate their previous knowledge I knew a bit
I knew this perfectly before I did not know this before I knew a bit about the system before
I did not know this
222 35 164
52.7% 8.3% 39%
Have you received feedback? Every time you attended an EYP event 14 3.3% Most of the time 107 25.4% Sometimes 223 53% Never 77 18.3% Most of the time
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
Has the feedback received (if any) been useful for you?
Most of the time
Every time 74 17.6% Most of the time 147 34.9% Sometimes 103 24.5% Never 19 4.5% Not applicable 78 18.5%
Have you received an evaluation & recommendation to an IS?
Yes 211 50.1% No 210 49.9%
If yes (you have a rec to attend an IS), did you also receive a separate feedback (oral or written) besides the evaluation? No, they were all merged in one
Yes 65 15.4% No, they were all merged in one. 172 40.9%
If no (they were all merged in one), were the comments included useful?
Most of the time
Always 52 12.4% Most of the time 71 16.9% Sometimes 57 13.5% Never 21 5%
Have you applied to an International Session as an official?
Yes 136 32.3% No 285 67.7%
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
Reasons survey takers have not applied to an IS - Lack of an evaluation/recommendation. - Lack of funds. - Not enough experience. - Time constraints. - Never attended an international session as a delegate. - Timing of International Sessions. - Interest in other types of sessions instead. - Want to acquire more experience/knowledge before applying. Noteworthy: Many survey takers thought it was a requirement to first have attended an IS as a delegate.
Extracts of answers from Survey Takers
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I have only received a recommendation to be a journalist and I was not interested in pursuing this stream within EYP as I preferred to be a chairperson. I have never been to IS, not even as a delegate so I don’t think it would be appropriate to apply as an official. I still want to gain more experience at sessions on a regional and national level. The evaluation I received stated that more participation in EYP sessions as an official was needed before being able to apply to an IS. Needless to say, it did not include the possibility of having competence from outside EYP, which is rather pathetic. It seemed like it required a lot of experience that I didn’t have and I knew nobody in the selecting committees. I have never had the wish to participate as an official at an International Session. I don’t think I am ready just yet as I’d prefer to first enhance my skills and get more experience. Even though it is very tempting to attend such unique events, it is difficult to leave university for 2 weeks. I have never seen a call for officials for an International Session.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
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Do you think the current human resources system is succeeding in ensuring all alumni receive feedback after their attendance in an EYP event? Yes No
152 36.1% 269 63.9%
Reasons why survey takers do not believe that it is succeeding - The evaluation form takes too long to fill out properly. - Not all alumni who ask for feedback, receive it. - There is no guarantee one will receive feedback after attending an event in any role. - Many roles are unsupervised and feedback is therefore often cursory or not very useful. - It is not mandatory for non IS sessions. - Because team leaders are often lazy or do not care enough to provide feedback. - National and regional events lack of monitoring and guidelines on receiving feedback; with many team leaders avoiding it or considering it optional and consequently not informing their team about feedbacking. - Feedback and evaluation standards/requirements vary at all EYP events. - Senior officials are not encouraged to submit feedback. - Participants are unaware they can ask for feedback. - Limitations to who can give evaluations and recommendations. - Depends largely on the feedbacking official.
Extracts of answers from Survey Takers
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I was never properly informed about the feedback and evaluation procedure, so I was never able to request it. People don’t know about the feedback and recommendation system, at least those I have talked to. I had been involved in EYP for about 2 years before I understood what it was. And when I learnt about it it felt so competitive, not like something you should ask for. I think some people are so active as team leaders and/or busy outside EYP that they do not always have time to give feedback. People don’t know how to ask for it. People aren’t giving it unless they are recommending you. The current feedback/recommendation form is a lot of work if filled in correctly. There aren’t enough trainings on giving feedback if we say we are such a feedback based organisation. There are no instructions to feedbacking regarding what to look for, how to take notes, perks of oral/written feedback...
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
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I suppose it works for international sessions, but at smaller events receiving feedback always depends on your superiors, some see it as a mandatory component of EYP experience, some do not worry about it too much. At the same time, even with IS feedback, it isn’t always very detailed or helpful - it very much depends on the person filling it in and their goodwill. Team leaders are not always telling their team that they can ask for feedback, sometimes because they don’t have time to fill in the extremely long evaluation form. The evaluation/feedback form should have a different format from the recommendation form. Because there is no obligation to provide or ask for feedback. However, this is most definitely not a bad thing. I strongly believe that feedback is a two way street and that it should stay that way; feedback requires consent from all (usually both) parties involved. The receiver should be willing to receive feedback i.e. explicitly ask for it and the giver should be willing to give. I don’t think this is necessarily a failure of the current human resources system but rather individuals on a personal level neglecting their responsibility for giving feedback when they are asked for such. I believe that everyone should receive at least a short feedback and it should be essential just as pre-session preparations are. Many alumni do not ask for feedback. Both for lack of knowledge you can actually ask for it and for little understanding of its use. From my experience talking to alumnus most recommendations are copied and pasted, the recommendations (evaluations...) made are directed at friends and as favours. There is a national and geographical bias in the current system and it is rather an instrument for carrier possibilities than self-improvement. The current system focuses on International sessions, which doesn’t cover the the majority of EYP experiences which are at regional and national sessions and at international fora. The lack of compulsion and/or established tradition for senior officials to give feedback is problematic. This means a) one has to be aware that you can approach your senior officials for feedback after your first experience in a role, which many are not, and even when they are aware you can do so, its always quite intimidating to do so b) the notion of what feedback entails varies hugely depending on who your senior official is c) There is huge variation in the amount of recs given at national sessions and forums, which isn’t necessarily reflective of the differences in the quality of officials between sessions. Very difficult for editors/presidents to write strong evaluations for all members of their teams within the given time frame (especially considering how exhausting the session itself is likely to be).
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
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Do you think the current human resources system succeeds in ensuring all alumni who deserve a recommendation for an IS official role receive it? Yes No
174 41.3% 247 58.7%
Reasons why survey takers do not believe that it is succeeding - Personal relationships affect who receives a recommendation. - Not all team leaders are willing to/can submit recommendations for their team members. - Team leaders recommend like-minded people. - Subjectivity. - It is easier to receive a recommendation in certain roles, at certain sessions. - Team leaders are hesitant towards writing recommendations because they might reflect badly on them. - Recommendations are institutialized only at International Sessions. - Recommendations take too long to draft. - Team leaders who have not been officials at ISs are not allowed to recommend. - Sessions without a president who can give recommendations often don’t get enough applicants. - Some team leaders submit plenty of recommendations, while others submit none. - Limited pool of those who can give recommendation - Time constraints limits the number of people who one gives recommendations to. - Different standards for what it takes to get a recommendation to be an official at an IS.
Extracts of answers from Survey Takers
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Being judged by only one person, leaves the evaluation at his/her discretion, which can be very subjective at times. Another thing is that for events other than International Sessions, the president provides the recommendations for the whole officials’ team also based on feedback from the Editor or the Head Organisers or even the VPs. I suppose that this indirect method causes communication problems. Recommending officials seem to select likeminded candidates that appeal to them personally. They are often scouting for their own future teams or successors. Recommending officials and EYP in general wholly disregard candidates with social disabilites. If the president/editor of the session is not in power to give such recommendation one can’t receive one. Recommendations seems to be handed out largely on the basis of who is best friends with an editor or president. I have no idea to make this better but I have seen some terrible chairs get to go to an IS due to their closeness to a race giver while some excellent ones have never gotten the chance. The result is a somewhat cliquey set of officials and a lack of diversity.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
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People who perform well as a delegate at one IS seem to have the easier procedure than people who already gained some chairing experience at smaller sessions. That seems strange. The system is too IS-centric and for those that never attend an IS as a delegate it is significantly harder to receive a recommendation, irrespective of their quality. Also, I do not believe it is just that one can receive a recommendation for a position you’ve never even been in (i.e. chair or journo recs for IS-delegates). There is not sufficient incentive/pressure for team leaders to complete evaluations/provide recommendations for their team members. Or team leaders are not sufficiently briefed/made aware of their responsibility to provide evaluations/recommendations. Only those who have chaired at an IS can submit recommendations. Generally, NCs try to ensure that team leaders fit that description, but this is not always possible, and of course also limits the pool of potential team leaders substantially. Not to mention that requiring every team leader to have chaired an IS is unnecessarily unfair and provided probably impossible always enforce. Personally, I have experienced two major flaws in the recommendation practice: Firstly, I have never heard of any objective ”threshold” for a recommendation, and leaving this assessment entirely to individual deliberations leads to a straightforwardly ”random” distribution of recommendations, i.e. with ”good luck” someone might receive a recommendation after having attended one single 3-day regional session as an official, whereas others have to wait for years. Secondly, I repeatedly experienced that the ”distribution” of recommendations was in fact based on personal rather than professional considerations. Presidents very often don’t give recommendations simply because of the time it takes to draft them. Secondly, this system is designed to be working especially well when there is a personal relationship between the person giving the recommendation and the person receiving it. Thirdly, events without a president who can give recommendations often don’t get enough applicants. Who indeed DOES deserve a recommendation? This is not harmonisable, nor quantifiable, and will therefore be forever flawed. Personality plays the biggest role when it comes to recommendation, any other factor is of minor relevance. I also have a fear that there are particular cliques emerging in EYP, where the same people attend the same sessions together. Which is not ideal for anybody’s personal development, but also means the system of recommendations are open to abuse as you can simply give it to your mate at an NS when they are not remotely up to the task of chairing at an IS. People have to go hunting for sessions where IS chairs are presiding. This (finding such sessions) is a fairly common conversation topic actually for some. Getting a recommendation currently seems to be more a matter of chance and friendship than a truly merit-based process.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
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Feedback culture and importance of feedback and recommendations How efficient do you think the current system is in upholding a feedback culture? 1 2 3 4
44 10.5% 181 43% 178 42.3% 18 4.3%
1= Not at all (being lowest), 4= Very (highest)
How important do you think feedback is? 1 2 0.5% 2 12 2.9% 3 80 19% 4 327 77.7% 1= Not at all (being lowest), 4= Very (highest)
How important do you think recommendations are? 1 2 3 4
39 9.3% 104 24.7% 161 38.2% 117 27.8%
1= Not at all (being lowest), 4= Very (highest)
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
Suggestions from Survey Takers on how to improve the current Human Resources system
- The current system encourages delegates and officials alike to fake or exaggerate a lot of their activities, and to pretend that everything is great all the time. I have on many, many occasions noticed a strong decrease in a delegate or official’s effectiveness and genuine nature after they find out about the recommendation system. - I would personally work on a document to establish that all team leaders (HOs, Editors and President) must give feedback at a certain time, something already done in IS’s but which I think is not established in all sessions. The Board of each national committee should assure that this is done in, for example, 2 weeks for RS and NSC and 1 month for IF’s and IS’s. - Inform better about the right to get feedback and impose more sanctions if Team Leaders don’t do their job. Make it possible for people who don’t have a rec but have a lot of experience to apply as an official for an IS. - I would inform EYPers more efficiently and in a clearer way about criteria of evaluation. - Get rid of the recommendation system and find a better way to do quality control during the selection. - More open files, so if I’m presiding a session and an individual applies who I don’t know I’d like to be able to access their file and see what feedback they have been given to get a better measure of them. More consistent training given at ISs - I was told ’if you can rec someone then you should’ whereas other people have been told ’it’s a great responsibility and it’s your name on that form so be very careful’. This is incredibly inconsistent and is probably part of the problem of only having a small pool to select from. More uniform guidance from the GB would be better on this. - Remove the mandatory and excluding system of only using recommendations. The evaluations have turned into a supporting actor, rather than the pillar of which decisions should stand. While recommendations could help in decisions to decide on future officials it should not be through only recommendations that such decisions are made. A recommendation should not be obligatory. The focus should be evaluating, and a methodological and chronological follow-up on an individuals development through evaluations as a basis for deciding on someones development and competence. Evaluations should be based on previous evaluations, and recommendations only given when asked. If recommendations are used, external recommendations should be permitted as well. The organisation is growing and developing, no system from which certain individuals have favored more than others should be kept, especially not by those who has earned that privilege. - Any official with the power of recommending others should be instructed to stick to a more or less objective threshold in their practice of actually distributing recommendations. If this is deemed impossible, I would argue for the complete abolition of the recommendation system and instead demand more comprehensive application questions and only in case of severe doubts on the personal qualification the consultation of prior feedbacking peers.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
- Drop recommendations completely. In over 100 events a year we select people based on their experience and their application. Why not at ISs? I do not see why written recommendations, which very often fail to explain the strengths and weaknesses of alumni, are necessary to attend International Sessions in EYP – expertise, commitment and knowledge should be, however. For me, it is also a cost-benefit calculation: Without forced recommendations we could focus on more valuable, personal feedback instead. The current amount of work and times it costs to keep the system running is unbearable for our organisation. - For IS Presidents the time frame for providing feedback is too short - realistically they can have 19 evaluations to write, approximately 2 hours per evaluation is 38 hours. IS Presidents are often working, finding a full working week within 5 weeks is nigh on impossible. I believe it is too easy to provide recommendations at this time. Presidents should not evaluate HOs at ISs - there is not enough line of sight over Chairing ability. - The recommendation database only contains feedback for those who were deemed at some point to make a good IS official and the database is only accessible for IS selection panels. This is such a pity as also non-IS selection panels could benefit from having access to the database. - We need to ask ourselves if IS board members necessarily need to have a recommendation to VP or preside an IS. It can only be healty for the selection process to create some more competition. The pool of potential IS board members need to become larger for the good of our ISs. - I would implement a document or a video or somenthing similar to explain how the system works. - At least at sessions where a jury is present, there should be a coordinated feedback for the delegates (jury + chair). - Increase accountability and document who asks for what, and when. - If we are to be a feedback-based organisation, submitting evaluations at RS/NS/IS level should be made mandatory, even if this increases the workload for respective team leaders. - Make sure that individual feedback is encouraged more even at shorter sessions and events such as regional sessions. - I would abolish the binary rec/no rec prerequisite, but keep evaluation forms and encourage their use also in applications for other sessions (so that applicants could attatch evaluations to their applications). - Giving applicants the possibility to add additional recs/references from - for example - peers, employers and professors or additional material (think published writing or aired shorts for people applying for a role in the media team) to their application. Also, changing the way application are *usually structured could be a good idea: at this point they all look like the same, with too many questions calling for verbose answers, which in most cases don’t tell a lot about the person writing them, their motivation and their intelligence; and this is possibly the reason why panels keep on choosing people they know first hand. - Mandatory feedback and evaluation for all officials at Nationals, IFs and ISs. Replacing the recommendation system with one based on evaluations. - By creating a real-time evaluation system. Having to tick boxes during the work time might be biased on one side, however, that would ensure every team member gets a direct evaluation. - Elaborate application system of some sort, where recommendations are not necessary, but the experience and motivation of the application is tested differently.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
- There are different aspects I would work on: 1. Culture on feedback: Explaining and TRAINING people to properly give feedback rather than having a PDF file showing what is like. 2. ”Learning with the example”: Most of the time, you start giving feedback once you have received on before, which makes me think that the more we train people, presidents and Team Leaders to give feedback, the more likely the people that receive feedback will do the same in their teams. 3. Opening the debate during the next BNC about the effectiveness of Recommendations and their real effect. Is it as accesible as it could be? Aren’t we loosing potential by banning people without a recommendation join our ISs? 4. I believe that the elitist status given to the IS is preventing us as an organisation to gain more from Feedback 5. Something useful could be, like it is now with Recs, have a space in the platform were people can leave a personal message with the feedback, so that instead of having a text on a Facebook message or an email, it is all gathered in a single place. With this, we could also focus and make more visible the process of giving and receiving feedback. - I would replace the current form with a single question. In this way, the threshold for given written feedback will be lowered significantly. Moreover, feedback should, in my opinion, be given orally and not in written form. A short form - together with an encouragement to sit down towards the end of an EYP event and give feedback - should help a shift from written to oral feedback. - While I still believe a recommendation system can be relevant, application processes should rely more on actual applications. In order to ensure fairness, applications could be anonymised before given to the selection panel. Also, involving people in the selection that do not have an official role at the respective session might result in fairer assessment of applicants based on their qualification. - I’ve heard about the suggestion to keep the official Evaluations, but make recs not mandatory for applying to ISs. This way, the evaluation isn’t as black-and-white, rec-or-no-rec, but you can still tell from the evaluations how suited an applicant is for an IS. Different standards of officials as to what performance is necessary to attend an IS would not be decisive anymore (a president might have lower or higher standards than the team leader genying or granting a rec). Also, an excellent application would make it possible to attend an IS without a rec. - I currently believe that feedback and recommendations in the current standardized form should not be compulsory or prerequisites for participating in our events. I am experiencing on a current basis people asking me for oral feedback or oral recommendation. This means that most times I give feedback orally based on a discussion with the individual also involving mutual feedback. Also, I start from asking the person to be self-critical and analyze himself/herself from their own perspective first. To this I add my analysis and together we try to discover what are the elements of difference between our perspectives. The feedback I received so far on this method has been strikingly positive. At the end of the process we write the feedback and recommendation as a joint product of both myself and the individual because I believe that feedback can be offered only by someone who understands the individual and doesn`t judge before understanding the substance. - I think it is necessary to make sure that everyone knows about this system. I think it isn’t a huge effort to send beginning delegates a mail detailing how this system works, so they know that it exists and so they can use it, if they would like to. - The main issue with delegate recommendations at ISs, which extends to recommendations given to people attending sessions as offcials as well, is that often people receive recommendations for a role that they are not taking at the session where they receive the recommendation from. It feels a bit silly to be able to get a journalist recommendation for chairing as the basis of these recommendations seem to often be very fragile.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey
- Have the feedback system integrated in sessions somehow. Maybe a progressive one, that you could fill partially every day. It should be the team leaders’ responsibility to do so. Minimize the post-session work, because most people forget the session once it is gone, or don’t want to input any more work towards it. Have the Human Resources department contact and check on sessions’ Team Leaders to AT LEAST remind and encourage them to provide feedback, if a closer supervision is not possible due to practical impossibilities of the department. - Used structured interviews for selections. With question like : ”imagine there is a delegate ... what do you do ?” - An open call should become the expected standard for every role in EYP - ie president - at every EYP event. Proper minuting and/or recording of all selection panels so that an alumnus can see what was said about them. Interview for senior roles, especially President, Board and Editor, at International Sessions.
Closing remarks The Working Group on reforming the recommendation system would like to thank all alumni who took the time to fill out the survey. The WG was impressed by the number of responses (421) and the dedication to give such lengthy and useful input. All comments and data were read, analyzed and taken into account when drafting the proposal. Photo credit: Janne Vanhemmens, Leo Kaindl, Jim Cramer and Noura Berrouba.
Conclusions of the Human Resources survey