Eurofound FAQ

Pros

Team and management support is very good. ICT are very helpful. Opportunity to learn on request.

Cons

That up until recently it was remote work so you could not enjoy the fantastic facilities.

Advice to Management

Do official monthly reviews with trainees.

Pros

Team and management support is very good. ICT are very helpful. Opportunity to learn on request.

Cons

That up until recently it was remote work so you could not enjoy the fantastic facilities.

Advice to Management

Do official monthly reviews with trainees.

Pros

very engaging topics, some inspiring colleagues, international reach

Cons

All senior managers are bureaucrats with no research background or experience in spite of the fact that they are tasked to run large-scale quantitative surveys. They resolve the conflict between their competences and their tasks by assigning their work to young researchers and then taking all decisions and credit for the work. And not only that, but they make their decisions with complete disregard to scientific arguments and establish empirical findings. Instead, their decisions either reflect their personal interests (e.g. self-promotion) or various political aspects (e.g. appeasing certain board members that they find important for them for one reason or another). Promotions are completely relieved of any relationship to merit. Some senior managers in charge of international surveys that collect data from half a million respondents do not know how to open a dataset. Of course, this is all made possible by their director, who is the master of them all in abuse of resources and given power for reasons of personal promotion. E.g. they used to hire researchers with PhD degree through temporary hiring agency, paying them around 1000 EUR per month and asking them to do work of regular policy analysts, while director (with his 15k EUR salary) is taking himself to London for a month-long 'professional development' course that costed Eurofound, and thus EU taxpayers 20,000 EUR, plus all travel and accommodation costs. And yes, all that while the agency is working on improving 'working conditions' for all the workers around Europe, based on principle that 'equal work requires equal pay'..

Advice to Management

Address the abuses, promote meritocracy, deal with incompetent managers, and adhere to the principles of 'equal pay for equal work'. And yes, make sure that all the abuses of current management are identified and properly addressed.

Pros

very engaging topics, some inspiring colleagues, international reach

Cons

All senior managers are bureaucrats with no research background or experience in spite of the fact that they are tasked to run large-scale quantitative surveys. They resolve the conflict between their competences and their tasks by assigning their work to young researchers and then taking all decisions and credit for the work. And not only that, but they make their decisions with complete disregard to scientific arguments and establish empirical findings. Instead, their decisions either reflect their personal interests (e.g. self-promotion) or various political aspects (e.g. appeasing certain board members that they find important for them for one reason or another). Promotions are completely relieved of any relationship to merit. Some senior managers in charge of international surveys that collect data from half a million respondents do not know how to open a dataset. Of course, this is all made possible by their director, who is the master of them all in abuse of resources and given power for reasons of personal promotion. E.g. they used to hire researchers with PhD degree through temporary hiring agency, paying them around 1000 EUR per month and asking them to do work of regular policy analysts, while director (with his 15k EUR salary) is taking himself to London for a month-long 'professional development' course that costed Eurofound, and thus EU taxpayers 20,000 EUR, plus all travel and accommodation costs. And yes, all that while the agency is working on improving 'working conditions' for all the workers around Europe, based on principle that 'equal work requires equal pay'..

Advice to Management

Address the abuses, promote meritocracy, deal with incompetent managers, and adhere to the principles of 'equal pay for equal work'. And yes, make sure that all the abuses of current management are identified and properly addressed.

Pros

very engaging topics, some inspiring colleagues, international reach

Cons

All senior managers are bureaucrats with no research background or experience in spite of the fact that they are tasked to run large-scale quantitative surveys. They resolve the conflict between their competences and their tasks by assigning their work to young researchers and then taking all decisions and credit for the work. And not only that, but they make their decisions with complete disregard to scientific arguments and establish empirical findings. Instead, their decisions either reflect their personal interests (e.g. self-promotion) or various political aspects (e.g. appeasing certain board members that they find important for them for one reason or another). Promotions are completely relieved of any relationship to merit. Some senior managers in charge of international surveys that collect data from half a million respondents do not know how to open a dataset. Of course, this is all made possible by their director, who is the master of them all in abuse of resources and given power for reasons of personal promotion. E.g. they used to hire researchers with PhD degree through temporary hiring agency, paying them around 1000 EUR per month and asking them to do work of regular policy analysts, while director (with his 15k EUR salary) is taking himself to London for a month-long 'professional development' course that costed Eurofound, and thus EU taxpayers 20,000 EUR, plus all travel and accommodation costs. And yes, all that while the agency is working on improving 'working conditions' for all the workers around Europe, based on principle that 'equal work requires equal pay'..

Advice to Management

Address the abuses, promote meritocracy, deal with incompetent managers, and adhere to the principles of 'equal pay for equal work'. And yes, make sure that all the abuses of current management are identified and properly addressed.