In his activity report for 2020, my colleague and predecessor Pierre Gildemyn shared his general conclusions at the end of four years as the CERN Ombud.
In addition to the statistics set out in the report (which vary relatively little from year to year), Section 9, Observations, sets out seven avenues to explore in order to tackle some particularly thorny challenges.
These observations also constitute the legacy that Pierre – in his capacity as CERN Ombud – has left for the benefit of everyone at CERN.
The Ombud’s report, publicly available on the website of the Ombud Office, is presented each year to the Director-General, followed by the Enlarged Directorate. The Ombud then presents it to the Standing Concertation Committee and the Tripartite Employment Conditions Forum (TREF), as the Member State representatives set great store by the smooth functioning of the Organization’s governance mechanisms. Lastly, the Ombud offers to present the report to each department, to the Staff Council and to the Senior Staff Advisory Committee (“The Nine”). The collaborations may also invite the Ombud to give a presentation.
The 2020 report raises some very pertinent questions about: a) the functioning of internal justice, b) the importance of interpersonal skills when it comes to line management, c) the need for greater awareness of the existence of sexism, sexual harassment and discrimination against women, d) the need to provide more support to our user colleagues, e) the potential detrimental effect on diversity and inclusion when there is a significant concentration of a particular nationality in a group, f) the possible consequences of the lack of a specific policy for managing consensual relationships in the workplace and, lastly, g) the importance of collaboration among the various services that support colleagues in difficulty.
For some of these matters, particularly d), e) and f), the report echoes and highlights the observations that were previously made by other services, which the Organization is already working on.
For others, such as supervision and leadership (b), the report offers a complementary perspective based on Pierre’s conversations with the people who consulted him, in this case about the importance of line managers being role models for their supervisees.
Lastly, he also raises some new issues, such as the way in which the formal complaints procedures work (a), the impact of consensual relationships on team dynamics (f) and, in particular, the risk posed to the Laboratory by sexism and sexual harassment (c) – a risk that he considers to have been underestimated.
It is heartening to see that the relevant people and teams in the Organization are already working on some of these issues and are actively thinking about the others.
Take a look at the 2020 activity report: you’ll see that the Ombud is also driving change at CERN!
Laure Esteveny
If you’d like to comment on any of my articles or suggest a topic that I could write about, please don’t hesitate to email me at ombud@cern.ch.