assignment for the situational competency based …

Assignment for the SCBI AD

ASSIGNMENT FOR THE SITUATIONAL COMPETENCY BASED INTERVIEW (SCBI)

Open Competition EPSO/AD/372/19 Administrators (AD5/AD7) Audit


This assignment describes the working situation to which the Situational Competency Based Interview (SCBI) will refer in some parts. The problems have not been fully

elaborated, the information is partial, additional research is allowed, and candidates will be allowed to ask questions during the interview.

© European Union, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of EPSO, avenue de Cortenbergh 25, B-1049 Brussels

This exercise may only be administered and interpreted by persons trained and authorised by EPSO and only under the conditions stipulated by EPSO.


ASSIGNMENT

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The content of this document is fictitious. While it has been derived from actual events, key details have been changed. The resulting descriptions do not reflect genuine events,

nor do they represent the actual views of the Member States, Institutions or their representatives.

Candidates are therefore advised to rely mainly on the information presented in the exercise, even if additional information from other sources can be used when

responding to questions.

You are an administrator and you have been asked to replace a colleague, Merit Egan, and deal with the following situation.

The document describes several situations in a given workplace. In this booklet, you will find background information on specific issues. You will also find information regarding the staff, the workplace, and other relevant matters.

Merit Egan had been appointed to the Employee Survey Working Group and was to take part in an informal preparatory meeting with a view to advising the senior management of the European Agency for Veterinary Medicine (EAVM). The documentation you need is included in this booklet. It comprises some background information on the EAVM and the challenges it is currently facing.

It is important that you accept the situation as it is presented to you. You may rearrange the documents in any order you wish, add remarks or make notes as necessary, add other documents, and keep it available during the SCBI.

This SCBI is designed to assess the following competencies: Analysis & Problem Solving, Learning & Development, Prioritising & Organising, Resilience, Working with Others, and Leadership. You do not require any previous knowledge to deal with the assignment.

The working group has been asked to analyse the situation and provide recommendations, which are to be presented to the EAVM’s senior management. At today’s meeting, the working group needs to carry out the following assignments:

• Identify the issues that arose following the roll-out of the first EAVM employee survey and recommend solutions to them.

• Advise the Herbal Medicines Europe (HME) agency on the priority and order of the actions it should take in light of the recent breach of security at its survey provider.

Please note:

Today is Monday, 9 April 201X Last year was 201X-1, next year will be 201X+1


ABBREVIATIONS USED

ADMIN Administrative Department ADV Scientific Advice Department COM Communication Department EAVM European Agency for Veterinary Medicine EU European Union EVAL Evaluation of Medicines Department FIN Financial Department HME Herbal Medicines Europe HR Human Resources ISN InSightNetwork ITD Information Technology Department LEX Legal Department MS Member State(s) REG Regulatory Strategy Department SB Supervisory Body SUPP Research Support Department


BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The European Agency for Veterinary Medicine (EAVM) carried out an employee survey for the first time in 201X-1 and is currently preparing for this year’s survey. The purpose of this annual survey is to gather feedback for senior management on employee engagement and morale. Answered anonymously, the survey should help reveal the opinions of EAVM employees on topics such as working conditions, supervisory impact, and motivation. Conducting the survey annually will allow the agency to track changes in employee perceptions of different matters over time. Ideally, the survey (and the positive changes that the EAVM hopes to make based on the results of the survey) should in the long term create a more open atmosphere in which problems can be discussed openly via two-way communication between management and staff.

The EAVM chose to use an online survey format and contracted external survey provider InSightNetwork (ISN) to support and facilitate the roll-out.

On the first page of the survey, respondents were asked to provide demographic information about themselves: the department they work in, their gender, age group, function level, length of service, and Member State (MS) of origin. Gathering such information means that the survey results can be broken down per demographic segment (department, age group, etc.), which helps ensure better targeted follow-up actions can be developed. Given that every department has its own strengths and weaknesses, it will be necessary to obtain the average survey scores per department in order to be able to develop follow-up actions that are specifically tailored to individual departments.

The EAVM’s sister agency, Herbal Medicines Europe (HME), is planning to launch its first employee survey in two weeks’ time (23 April 201X). However, following reports of a security breach at its originally chosen survey provider, EUsurveys, HME has at the very last minute decided to change providers and work with ISN, with whom the EAVM has enjoyed a very good working relationship. HME’s Supervisory Body (SB)1 has asked to be informed of the survey results, as some HME staff have been expressing their discontent with the current state of affairs in the agency. Given the apparent levels of demoralisation among HME staff, the SB wants to discuss the survey results during its next meeting with HME’s management, which takes place in four weeks (7 May 201X).

1 The Supervisory Body (SB) is HME’s integral governance body. It plays a supervisory role and has general responsibility for budgetary and planning matters, appointing the Executive Director and monitoring the agency’s performance. It is composed of representatives from each MS, the European Parliament, and the Commission.

http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/about_us/general/general_content_000097.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac05805040fa

http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/about_us/general/general_content_000097.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac05805040fa


Welcome Mail

From: Peter Pichler, HR Director, EAVM To: Merit Egan Date: 09/04/201X Subject: Employee Survey Working Group Dear Merit,

You have been appointed to an ad hoc working group tasked with:

• Identifying the issues that arose following the roll-out of the first EAVM employee survey and recommending solutions to them.

• Advising the Herbal Medicines Europe (HME) agency on the priority and order of the actions it should take in light of the recent breach of security at its survey provider.

Please note that around 100 respondents failed to complete the Demographic Questions section of the survey last year, which prevented us from linking the specific concerns raised in their responses to the correct departments. This should not be allowed to happen again this time around.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the low score that some departments achieved in the survey category ‘Workload Management’.

Please collect all the relevant information you can find on these subjects. Last Friday, stakeholder workshops were held with selected staff from six EAVM departments, who were invited to give their views on this working group’s tasks. These particular departments were chosen because of their high response rates to the first survey and/or the extent of their contacts with staff throughout the agency.

Pay particularly close attention to the opinions of these key stakeholders; use their input to help you form your own opinion, and take their advice into account when formulating your recommendations.

The EAVM departments with which workshops have been held are

• the Financial Department (FIN) • the Evaluation of Medicines Department (EVAL) • the Communication Department (COM) • the Legal Department (LEX) • the Information Technology Department (ITD) • the Scientific Advice Department (ADV)

I suggest you contact the above-mentioned parties at a time that is convenient for them. One-to-one video calls before the meeting might help in finding common ground or room for negotiation at this stage.

Kind regards, Peter Pichler PS: By the way you will find an email I received from Ms O’ Brien, regarding an issue with a colleague, Felipe Dominguez. Please follow this up with her.


Extract 201X-1 Employee Survey

15/07/201X-1

To keep the respondents’ answers confidential and conceal their identities, answers to the demographic questions were processed by ISN, as were the responses to all other categories of survey questions. ISN then forwarded summaries of the processed survey results, e.g. average scores, to the EAVM’s management, which did not have access to individual responses at any time. All measures taken to protect confidentiality were fully explained to staff in the email they received inviting them to participate in the survey.

During a briefing session, ISN helped EAVM management to interpret the results correctly, in order to ensure that the right conclusions could be drawn.

In total, 401 staff were invited to participate in the survey; 382 questionnaires were completed, of which 99 contained no demographic information.

Results extract

REG SUPP ADMIN EVAL ITD COM HR

Department size 88 62 56 69 23 42 31

Surveys completed 30 21 53 67 23 39 31

Percentage of favourable opinions per survey category

Salary 98 96 70 67 72 78 65

Workload Management 100 98 44 33 34 73 83

Client Focus 99 100 66 71 82 85 65

Development Opportunities 98 99 63 60 73 64 71

External Relations 100 98 82 82 78 75 73

NB. Table does not display results from all departments or for all survey categories

No meaningful differences were found between age groups, genders or countries of origin.

Open questions

In their responses to the open questions, employees repeatedly stated that they felt that they did not receive appropriate recognition for the work they did: this perception seems to be particularly prevalent among employees in the Administrative Department (ADMIN).


Minutes HR Meeting

Date and time: 02/04/201X — 10.05-11.30 Attendees: HR Director (Peter Pichler) and HR team leaders

Department update

• ADMIN Appraisal scores in ADMIN still do not show enough variation: year after year, every employee receives a “good” overall result, despite the fact that several reprimands have been handed out. Other departments make more use of the full range of the scale, awarding scores ranging from “weak” to “exceptional”. Some ADMIN staff complained that their colleagues were not fulfilling their duties as required. We talked to the staff accused and found out that they (a) saw little value in the work they did and (b) lacked the motivation to try to be more productive.

• EVAL We have been informed by EVAL that its legal experts did not inform EVAL staff sufficiently promptly about a new regulation on marketing authorisation requirements, which had significant implications for some of the cases they were handling. A lot of time and resources had to be spent to correct this error. We have been asked to look into the issue.

• REG and SUPP Rumour has it that staff of the Regulatory Strategy (REG) and Research Support Departments (SUPP) are afraid to speak out to their management. This was a surprise to us, as we have always found the management teams from these departments to be quite easy-going in all their contacts with HR. There have been no reports of anyone being bullied or punished, so we do not know what is going on.

Miscellaneous

• ISN was contracted by the EAVM under the interinstitutional HR Services Framework1, which was set up four years ago. We are still using this agreement and will continue to work with ISN as the provider for our next survey. Please be informed that if changes are made to the questionnaire, these changes must be agency-wide.

• Our new intern will soon start updating all demographic data (i.e. function level, department, age, length of service, gender, and MS of origin) stored in the personnel database.

1 The HR Services framework is an agreement between several institutions and HR service providers, which sets out common terms under which these institutions can purchase such services from providers.


EU Staff Regulations

We advise any new staff who are worried about whether EU jobs are still as secure as they used to be (i.e. before all the reforms of the last couple of years) to consult the list of Staff Regulations which all EU bodies are bound by. EU officials are highly unlikely to ever be fired — it can happen, but only in very specific circumstances, outlined here.

However, despite the existence of these Staff Regulations, unfair reassignments made solely to punish EU staff are all too common. Felipe Dominguez, a REG official at the EAVM, contacted us because he was reassigned after mildly criticising department operations during his annual appraisal. We should have evolved beyond these despicable practices by now! Rest assured, if something similar ever happens to you, your union will be there to help.

EAVM Employee Survey

More and more employee surveys are carried out every year; however, it appears that some EU officials continue to be wary of answering such surveys openly. For example, it now seems apparent that many EAVM officials were still afraid that they would be identified from their responses to open questions, despite having received full explanations from their management and the survey provider about the way in which their individual responses would be kept confidential.

Colleagues speak

Mario, procurement expert at the European Agency for Wildlife Protection, advises all staff to follow public procurement rules strictly in order to avoid being accused of fraud. Even for smaller budget purchases, lengthy procurement procedures need to be followed: a call for tender must be published, and providers must be given sufficient time to submit their proposals. After the submission period closes, the most suitable proposal then needs to be selected based on previously defined and transparent criteria.

Lotte, SUPP team leader at the EAVM, sent us pictures of SUPP’s recently restyled open offices. The smart placement of partition walls has helped reduce noise levels in the office. These are certainly a good idea for staff who yearn for some peace and quiet!

Institutions United EU staff Union

www.institutionsunited.eu

http://www.institutionsunited.eu/


European officials

Online Discussion FORUM

Subject: Are employee surveys really confidential? We have to fill out a staff survey at work, but I am still quite hesitant about revealing how I honestly feel in my responses. I want to be open, but only if I can be 100 % certain that my answers cannot be traced back to me personally — but you can never be sure, can you?

Posted by Black Widow on 07/02/201X Even if you don’t fill in your name, you can still be easily identified by your other information: for example, I’m the only woman over 50 in our department, so that’s all the info they need to identify me!

Posted by Hulk on 09/02/201X I understand completely; we just had a survey too. Ours had this mandatory “I Agree to the Terms” checkbox, but when I actually read the terms, they said I had to allow the survey provider to handle my private data. I really wanted to share some negative feedback about my boss, but I was too scared to do so and in the end I decided not to answer some of the questions.

Posted by Iron Man on 10/02/201X

Luckily, we didn’t have to rate co-workers in our employee survey, or I would have got the worst results! I know that my lack of work ethic (as they call it) is driving some of my colleagues crazy, but I just can’t make myself care anymore.

Posted by Anonymous on 10/02/201X I can see the value of employee surveys; I always answer candidly and have never run into any trouble. Anyhow, I don’t see how I could get into any bother, since I only ever reply concerning the department I work in — there are over 50 of us here, so nobody could ever guess which answers were mine.

Posted by Storm on 10/02/201X


Email 1

From: Radmila Kucerova, assistant to Chana Krasko (HR Director), HME To: Omer Prifti, assistant to Peter Pichler (HR Director), EAVM Date: 06/04/201X Subject: Employee survey Dear Omer, I got your email address from Ms Krasko. Please thank Mr Pichler for agreeing to help us out with organising our first survey. We greatly appreciate this, as the EAVM’s assistance will be particularly valuable to us, given that your agency already has experience of working with ISN to roll out an employee survey.

I have a number of initial questions for you.

According to our legal department, our agency’s regulations stipulate that staff should be informed about the survey results; how did the EAVM tackle this?

I came across an interview with the Director of the European Society of Market and Opinion Research — I will send you a scanned copy later — who claims that demographic questions are generally seen as personal and intrusive and therefore often make people uncomfortable. The Director warns that the inclusion of such questions substantially increases the risk that respondents will provide either untrue or incomplete responses. What was the EAVM’s experience with this?

Finally, have you been in contact with ISN recently? They have already confirmed that they can deliver the survey, but now I cannot get hold of any of their trainers.

Radmila

----- Reply from [email protected] - 09/04/201X -----

From: Omer Prifti, assistant to Peter Pichler (HR Director), EAVM To: Radmila Kucerova, assistant to Chana Krasko (HR Director), HME Date: 09/04/201X Subject: Employee survey Dear Radmila,

Thank you for your email. I have been working here only since January, so I will first have to consult my colleagues before I can answer your questions. However, I have been in contact with ISN about training the contact people for our 201X survey. ISN’s earliest opening is on 19 April (the end of next week): the EAVM cannot make this date, but maybe HME could.

Good luck,

Omer

H M E

mailto:[email protected]


Email 2

From: Fianna O’Brien, HR team leader, EAVM To: Peter Pichler, HR Director, EAVM Date: 05/04/201X Subject: ADMIN staff

Dear Peter,

As you know, I talked to some people in ADMIN, and it appears that some of the staff lack the drive to carry out all the tasks expected of them. This increases the workload on others, who are doing their best to keep the team going at full speed but who have to work much harder to make up for the lack of effort shown by some of their colleagues. Some people put their lower productivity levels down to a general lack of motivation, while one staff member told me that she had to work very slowly in the beginning because she had never been asked to manage projects before and therefore had to learn by trial and error. We really need to get together with ADMIN management to discuss appropriate courses of action.

However, staff problems do not occur in ADMIN only: Enrique from REG told me today that he decided to move Felipe Dominguez to a more interesting position after Felipe had brought up many good suggestions for improving operations at REG. Enrique’s thinking was that, in this new position, Felipe could do more to ensure that his suggestions were put into practice. However, it now appears that Felipe feels that he is being pushed aside, and therefore he has contacted the union to challenge his reassignment.

Best regards,

Fianna


Email 3

From: Radmila Kucerova, assistant to Chana Krasko (HR Director), HME To: Omer Prifti, assistant to Peter Pichler (HR Director), EAVM Date: 09/04/201X Subject: Employee survey Dear Omer, I just wanted to inform you that a decision has been taken — at the highest levels of HME — that the results of the employee survey must be presented at the next SB meeting. Please note that this meeting is impossible to reschedule. As a result of this last-minute decision, we are now under a lot of pressure to move things forward quickly. Luckily, we had already prepared the survey questions; furthermore, we had also decided who the internal contact persons for the survey are going to be.

I have spoken to Mr Pichler on the phone, and he confirmed that a working group is being set up to help us with our survey. In relation to the demographic questions, he told me that some EAVM staff must have been afraid that their demographic information could be used to link their responses back to them, because many of them either skipped the demographic questions or filled them in but then gave only favourable answers to the other survey questions. At HME we need our staff to answer all questions honestly and we also need to be able to link people’s responses to the correct departments in order to be able to do something meaningful with the results. For that reason, I sincerely hope that our staff do not share this fear; however, I do realise that there will be no way of knowing for sure whether everyone has answered the survey honestly.

Kind regards, Radmila

H M E


Website of service provider ISN

How do you ensure responses are kept confidential?

To ensure the confidentiality of the responses, the average survey scores we forward to an organisation are always calculated based on the scores of groups of at least seven people, which makes it impossible to connect answers to people.

How do you make sure respondents submit only one questionnaire?

When people are invited to participate in a survey, they receive a unique survey ID from ISN. This allows us to track the completion rate and verify that no one participates twice.

What is the timeline for launching an employee survey with ISN?

This depends on the complexity of the project. We can start delivering our services only after a contract has been signed. Starting from scratch, it usually takes at least two months to prepare thoroughly for the launch of an employee survey.

Next, we advise organisations to keep the survey open for at least one week, preferably two. Finally, analysing the results takes around two to three days — again, depending on the complexity of the survey.

What can you do to ensure a smooth survey process?

In ISN’s experience, staff will have many questions while the survey is being conducted, so we advise organisations to appoint one internal contact person per department to handle all employee questions about the survey.

What can organisations do to follow up on their survey results?

After the survey closes, the results (which will have been processed and analysed by ISN) must be shared with management and staff. This may sound logical, but a surprising number of organisations neglect to do so! To maintain an atmosphere of trust and transparency, it is essential that the results be shared first with all survey respondents and also the managers who are being evaluated before they are shared with any external party that did not take part in the survey.

www.isn.com/faq

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS


Email 4

From: Magda Korh To: Merit Egan Cc: Date: 3/04/200X Subject: Co-operation issues

Dear Merit,

I am really sorry to bother you with such a topic, but I am beginning to have a significant problem working with Juan, who is becoming tense as the date for the meeting approaches, and with whom I have more and more problems in communicating. Today he was so upset over something that does not seem to be very important to me. I do not know how to handle him and I would be glad if you could help sort this out.

If I am doing something wrong, I am happy to try to do better. But I do not feel comfortable working in such a tense situation.

Thank you very much for your help and support,

Magda


Email 5

From: Jeanne Ormal To: Merit Egan Cc: Date: 3/04/200X Subject: Employee survey requests

Dear Merit,

Several departments have been contacted by various staff representatives and employees, regarding the survey. I have sent a note around the departments recommending forwarding all requests, comments and suggestions to you. It is vital to keep the dialogue open on this project. If you are contacted please take the time to listen to and understand their concerns/expectations/requests.

Thank you,

Jeanne


Email 6

From: Enrico Perchio To: Merit Egan Cc: Date: 1/04/200X Subject: Update on employee survey

Dear Merit,

Our new Head of Sector, Olga Lante, would like to be given a short briefing on the survey results. She will call you. It would be nice if you could explain in a nutshell what it is about, what the challenges are, and what the next steps will be.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Enrico


Email 7

From: Juan Tuwan To: Merit Egan Cc: Date: 1/04/200X Subject: Who is doing what

Dear Merit,

It is about time you clarify the roles here. As I understood it, I was supposed to deal with the technical side of the meeting, and Magda was supposed to manage content with the stakeholders to support your tasks. Now I have just received a phone call from someone at one of the stakeholders telling me that she had agreed with Magda that we would propose streaming in addition to conferencing! What is this? Can you please talk to Magda and explain to her where her role starts, and where it ends? Or am I the one that is going insane?

We need to fix this ASAP if we want to avoid a major upset at the upcoming meeting.

Thanks,

Juan


FEEDBACK RECEIVED FROM VARIOUS PARTIES

THE OPINION OF THE FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT (FIN)

To resolve the problem of unanswered demographic questions in REG and SUPP, it has been suggested that ISN could link respondents’ demographic information to their survey answers. However, FIN does not agree with this, because employees who were reluctant to provide information potentially identifying them might refuse to answer the questions honestly or even to take part at all if they knew that their demographic data was going to be linked to their responses automatically. Moving the demographic questions to the last page of the survey would not make much difference either, as those employees would just skip these questions and exit the survey. While moving these questions might yield more honest opinions, we still would not know to which department they referred. Therefore, it would be better to keep the demographic questions on the first page. Moreover, FIN does not understand the levels of mistrust among REG and SUPP staff, especially considering all the investments that management from both departments have made to improve working conditions for their staff; for example, office partition walls were recently installed in SUPP to provide employees with a calmer, optimised working space.

FIN has heard from its contacts in ADMIN that some staff in that department refuse to do anything more than the bare minimum. This unacceptable situation urgently needs to be addressed by ADMIN management, which should use any means available to compel these particular employees to do more work; anyone who refuses should be reprimanded. FIN is not surprised that the ADMIN department has workload management issues, given that ADMIN staff never record what tasks are completed by whom, and managers therefore have no way to measure staff performance, which only aggravates the situation. FIN urges all departments to be more careful with emails and meetings, as it has heard ITD staff in particular complain that the high volume of emails they receive and the numerous meetings they have to attend add significantly to their workloads.

Regarding HME’s first employee survey, FIN points out that ISN will not provide any respondent support during the survey unlike EUSurveys (HME’s original survey provider). With only two weeks to go, FIN stresses that there is no time to lose: contact persons need to be trained as soon as possible. FIN also has access to the framework under which the EAVM contracted ISN and notes that HME is listed as one of the contracting authorities, which means that this agency could use this framework to hire ISN without having to launch an entirely new procurement procedure.


THE OPINION OF THE EVALUATION OF MEDICINES DEPARTMENT (EVAL)

EVAL is astounded that REG and SUPP staff seem to have so little trust in their management that they are afraid to answer the survey questions openly. According to EVAL, moving the demographic questions to the end of the survey would not resolve this issue or lead to an increase in actionable results. While moving these questions might ‘trick’ some respondents into giving more honest answers because they do not have to provide information potentially identifying themselves at the start of the survey, there would still be nothing to stop people from deciding to skip the demographic questions and simply exiting the survey at that point. Instead, EVAL suggests that HR could supply the demographic info to ISN, which could then use the participants’ unique IDs to link the correct data to the respondent’s answers. Automatically linking demographic information to the corresponding responses ensures that no mistakes can occur. In fact, the results would be 100 % aligned with the actual departmental structure of the EAVM. That being said, EVAL is convinced that the staff and management of both REG and SUPP should try to be more transparent if they want to improve the situation and move towards a more open climate.

EVAL believes that workloads at the EAVM could be made more manageable if staff were more aware of one another’s areas of experience and expertise — currently, staff members often struggle to complete tasks that their colleagues could easily help them with. Another way in which workloads could be made more manageable is by setting clear work targets and keeping a record of completed work, as this will help departments to prioritise and plan resources more effectively. This might even prove effective in the ADMIN department, where — EVAL was astonished to hear — some staff appear to care so little about being part of a team that they will allow any work they leave undone to become their colleagues’ responsibility without batting an eyelid.

EVAL points out that the results of HME’s employee survey are likely to contain sensitive information about the various departments in that agency and therefore are intended primarily for HME’s management and not for its staff. Furthermore, EVAL warns that if HME wants to ensure that all its internal contact persons are trained before the survey is launched, it needs to hurry up with finalising the contract, as ISN will agree to take on any tasks only after a signed contract has been received.


THE OPINION OF THE COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT (COM)

COM has heard from its contacts within SUPP and REG that staff in these departments do not always understand why certain decisions are taken by management, which often leads to the misinterpretation of management’s intentions. COM therefore suggests that REG and SUPP management should make greater efforts to communicate more clearly. That being said, COM also thinks that moving the demographic questions to the end of the questionnaire will result in more honest responses to all survey questions. Such a course of action is, in COM’s opinion, best practice: respondents see this as a less threatening approach and one that does not put them immediately on guard by asking invasive questions at the start of the questionnaire. COM believes that an EU agency like the EAVM should be committed to protecting the privacy of its officials, and it is therefore totally against the idea of sharing demographic information with ISN and then asking this provider to link it to the survey responses automatically, as some parties have suggested.

In order to reduce stress and make workloads more manageable, COM advises the management teams in all EAVM departments to filter carefully the information they choose to share with staff, since an overload of informational meetings and emails is already adding significantly to the workload of some EAVM staff. COM was surprised to learn from its contacts in ADMIN that that department neither sets clear work targets nor keeps track of who does what. This only encourages some people to try to get away with doing next to nothing, while their more conscientious colleagues feel compelled to make up for this by working extra hard, which obviously aggravates the workload problem in ADMIN.

Concerning HME’s survey, COM knows that a high-level decision has been made to present the results of HME’s survey at the next SB meeting. Because this meeting cannot be moved, the survey has become a top priority, and the people involved must do their utmost to ensure that HME management will be able to present all survey results four weeks from now. COM would also like to draw attention to the fact that, like the EAVM, HME is named as a contracting authority in the HR Services Framework under which ISN can be engaged. Therefore, HME will not have to follow normal procurement rules, as ISN can be contracted immediately under the terms of this framework. However, given the limited time available, COM’s advice would be to defer briefing HME’s management on the survey results until after the SB meeting, so that it can be done properly by including the carefully selected, specific information that is most useful to each manager.


THE OPINION OF THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT (LEX)

Regarding the problem of the blank demographic questions, LEX points out that the EAVM must adhere to the laws protecting its staff’s privacy. Personnel data should not be shared with external parties without proper thought, which is why LEX advises the EAVM to be very careful if it chooses to have ISN link the demographic data to the survey responses automatically. In LEX’s opinion, the EAVM should make sure that staff regulations are respected at all times during the survey. One way of doing this is to include an ‘Agree to Terms’ checkbox in the survey, as this will mean that respondents have to give their explicit authorisation before their personal information can be shared with the survey provider. Besides, according to LEX, there was no real justification for some of the demographic questions posed by the first survey. ISN did not analyse all that information, and where it did, it found no major differences between demographic segments (except between departments). For these reasons, LEX sees no point in including all of the same demographic questions in the next survey.

To tackle the issue of high workloads that has been reported by some ADMIN employees, LEX suggests trying to reawaken the team spirit in those who are not pulling their weight. Management should clearly and calmly explain to these people that their lack of effort leaves some of their colleagues with an unmanageable workload. LEX is convinced that the currently less productive employees would be more strongly motivated to complete more work if they were more aware of how their lack of drive was affecting their colleagues. Based on its recent meetings with ADMIN staff, LEX is convinced that a harsh approach — i.e. reprimanding the staff involved — would only make matters worse; after all, threats or reprimands have never increased anyone’s intrinsic motivation levels. Furthermore, LEX feels that not enough knowledge is shared in the EAVM: the high workloads that some staff experience could be reduced by more effective information management and knowledge sharing among colleagues.

Regarding HME’s employee survey, LEX believes that staff should be informed about the survey results before any information is shared with the SB (which comprises people from outside the agency). HME’s staff is already highly demoralised and discontent, so all information should be shared with staff from the start, certainly before the SB receives the results. Finally, LEX thinks that HME’s management should be able to provide at least some indication of a concrete action plan during the SB meeting, but, to do so, managers will have to be able to take a look at the results in advance of the meeting.


THE OPINION OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT (ITD)

ITD does not think that asking ISN to link demographic information to the responses is a good way to solve the problem of unanswered demographic questions. This cannot be done legally without the respondents’ explicit consent, and ITD fears that REG and SUPP staff might refuse to answer honestly if they knew that such identifiable information was going to be linked to their responses automatically. Judging by the lack of basic trust in management displayed by REG and SUPP staff, ITD can only conclude that the management teams in these departments must be treating their people very unfairly indeed — management misconduct of this type should never be allowed. ITD feels that it is a very bad sign when staff are so afraid of being identified that they do not dare to respond honestly to a survey. REG and SUPP should focus on rebuilding staff trust in the long term, as improving matters in the few months before the next survey might prove impossible.

According to ITD, workload problems in ADMIN are due to the clear lack of commitment among certain ADMIN staff. It seems that some people need to be recognised externally for the work they do in order to feel motivated enough to take on a wider range of tasks. If sufficient recognition is not forthcoming, many people begin to start slacking off, which can easily lead to their colleagues becoming overburdened. If this issue does not get resolved soon, ITD fears that the motivation levels of even the most committed staff in ADMIN will drop. Furthermore, ITD does not agree with the practice of informing all employees about everything: all this does is confuse people and prevent them from getting their work done. In ITD, some people have already admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the overload of information they receive, which confuses them to such an extent that they no longer know what is important.

Regarding HME’s survey, ITD is worried that four weeks is not enough time to conduct the survey and prepare the results for the SB. Even if HME had not switched providers, four weeks would still be an extremely short time in which to get everything done. In order not to lose face, HME’s management cannot come to the SB meeting unprepared: they therefore need to be thoroughly briefed on the survey results beforehand in order to be able both to discuss these results and to suggest potential plans of action to the SB. For this reason, ITD advises postponing the launch of the survey.


THE OPINION OF THE SCIENTIFIC ADVICE DEPARTMENT (ADV)

To get more honest survey responses from REG and SUPP staff, ADV thinks that the demographic questions should be placed at the end of the survey. Moving these questions to the end will ensure that respondents answer the questionnaire more candidly, given that they will feel more relaxed in the knowledge that they did not have to provide information potentially identifying themselves before answering the survey questions. Moreover, there should be fewer demographic questions in this year’s survey: these are often regarded not merely as somewhat threatening and invasive but also as irrelevant to the goal of the survey, which just alienates respondents and reduces the chances of their responding honestly. ADV must admit to having some doubts about how well-intentioned the management teams in REG and SUPP actually are; for example, they recently installed partition walls in their open-space offices to keep staff from talking to one another, which clearly shows just how strict and rigid managers in these departments are.

Furthermore, from its contacts in ADMIN, ADV knows that staff in that department do not receive much recognition, even for exceptional performances. Given that no distinction is made between good and poor performers in ADMIN, it should come as no surprise to anyone that some staff in that department refuse to take on any additional tasks. Speaking from experience, ADV warns that forcing unmotivated people to work harder will result only in low quality output; therefore, other ways to resolve the workload problems in ADMIN need to be explored. To reduce workload, ADV is convinced that the EAVM should invest in ensuring a better information exchange within/between departments. To illustrate this, ADV refers to recent events in EVAL, where some staff were not informed in time about important changes to the marketing authorisation requirements for their dossiers, which resulted in their having to do double the work — all of which could have been avoided if a more effective information exchange system was in place.

ADV feels that not informing staff of the survey results is a sure-fire way of undermining engagement. In fact, staff need to be informed about the survey results quite soon after the survey closes in order to avoid creating the impression that nothing is being done with their responses. Therefore, ADV suggests that if HME’s management is to be informed about the results before the SB meeting, then so should all HME staff. ADV also advises HME not to delay arranging training for those who will act as contact persons during the survey; sessions should be held as soon as the availability of the ISN trainers allows.

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