New faculty career model to be introduced by Corvinus

Every three years, all Corvinus faculty members can review whether they prefer to engage in education or research according to the academic career model that is about to be accepted. HR will be preparing new job descriptions and will organize new internal trainings. Project manager reports continued. A few weeks after the management and then the student briefings, Corvinus ’various renewal projects also held online reports on their strategy, where they are now and where they want to go in the long run. Head of Strategic HR Processes Zsuzsanna Csentericsné Arnold and Vice-Rector for Faculty László Csicsmann gave a presentation on Thursday, 22nd October, which as followed live by more than 100 university employees.

Teaching teachers

In her presentation the HR manager explained that the simplification of payroll could be experienced by Corvinus employees already this year. The long-term goal of the university is to achieve a target reference wage level in the academic and service areas, which would be brought closer gradually over the next period and would be provided through individually differentiated wage increases. Remuneration also includes the opportunity for a performance bonus, which will be expected in March each year following the annual performance review. According to Zsuzsanna Csentericsné, the remuneration conditions will develop from year to year, and it will take approx. 3-5 years until the wage levels achieved can be considered as fair in comparison to market wages and until the colleagues too consider their wages more fair.

As a next step, HR supports the changes related to the introduction of the academic career model, preparing the employment conditions according to the new expectations. At the same time, new job descriptions (eg finance, law, facility management) are being prepared in the Service Provider areas, which are arranged in an appropriate structure in the process of job evaluation. This work will be performed with the involvement of managers in the HR Committee.

In-house training has already started and will be further expanded in the future. For example, English language training are already in progress, with an emphasis on teacher competence development, and new programs will be launched in the future to develop researcher competence, and leadership training are also planned.

What will the teacher-researcher career look like?

At the event Vice-Rector László Csicsmann presented an academic career model developed with the participation of several Corvinus colleagues, which is planned to be introduced from 1st January 2021. He stressed that the system is motivating and wants to steer educators towards continuous improvement, while also providing significant space to fulfill individual ambitions. The aim of the University is to align individual career paths with the goals set in the university strategy. Currently, more than 500 different individual careers are seen in the system’s capabilities.

In course of the development of the career plan, they wanted to create a flexible system where university faculty can decide every three years whether they want to focus on research or teaching in the next period. In addition, gathering international experience will also be part of the career path, while also wanting to pay attention to the principle of equal treatment, so that female educators on their maternity leave will not suffer any disadvantaged for having children.

The goal is more research

Three different types of jobs were determined. The balanced one corresponds best to the current Corvinus practice, where approx. 80 percent of the faculty member’s time is spent on teaching and 20 percent on research.

Obviously, the university expects a higher number of teaching hours in the teaching-focused position, but in this case, too, there will be a minimum publication requirement.

A research-focused job comes with a reduced number of teaching hours, however, the university imposes requirements regarding the number and quality of the publications, such as determining which studies in internationally accepted scientific journals are accepted for the performance evaluation. A minimum publication quota to be met will be determined, but the system will also include motivating factors, such as financial rewards for faculty members who significantly exceed the requirements.

The Vice-Rector explained that when the system is introduced, they want to direct 60-70 colleagues towards the research-focused area, because it is essential to increase the number of relevant publications in order to move forward in international rankings.

The performance of colleagues in education-focused jobs will also be measured based on teaching quality, learning environment, and student results.

Less classed, but more responsibility for heads of institute

After the presentations, the speakers also answered the questions of the staff. One of the suggestions was that a position within an organization (e.g. director of an institute) also takes away the colleagues’ time from research. László Csicsmann agreed with this, and said that they were already working to supplement the current material with exemptions for managers, so that heads of institute would have less educational work, and the leadership position could be filled for a maximum of three three-year cycles.

Another question referred to selection of the 60-70 colleagues who will be placed in research-focused positions from January, to which the Vice-Rector responded that it would not be a selection but rather individual ambitions would be taken into consideration, which should always be agreed with the institute directors.

It was also raised that if at the end of the three-year period, several lecturers would rather go in the direction of researchers within an institute, then how would it be possible to reallocate lessons without conflicts? According to László Csicsmann, in all cases the head of the institute must ensure that these types of changes do not cause HR problems.

The project presentation event can be viewed here in hungarian.