TEC Meeting on 28/09/2001

Participants: Isabel Bejar-Alonso, Ricarda Betzing, Alfred Blas, Gerrit Jan Bossen, Enrico Chiaveri, Francoise Fabre, Francois Fluckiger, Sue Foffano, Andrée Fontbonne, Alain Guiard-Marigny, Erwin Moselmans, Linda Orr-Easo, Paula Ribeiro, Alberto Scaramelli, Mick Storr, Mauro Taborelli, Marc Tavlet, Myriam Veyrat, Davide Vite, Sylvain Weisz

Invited:          Vince Hatton

Excused:        André Arn, Margrit Burri, Friedmann Eder, Josi Schinzel

1.        Towards Divisional Training Plan

Report on Web-HRT training: 2 sessions and 15 participants

                è Training Overview report added

                è Session code added

                è Problem fixed (Report folder and EST pb.)

                è Training Summaries based on hours and cost are currently being tested

 è Still to do: drill-down from training summary, summary discrepancy grouping    person or status code, course code search screen (search by title).

Warm thank’s from Francois Fluckiger. Question about Divisional Training plan versus Individual Training plans è They are the same.

Question from Mick Storr about the “time decay” of he HR database (when people leave …). They do not appear in the statistics and HRT must be used carefully when looking at the past.

The general question about skill inventory of the staff was debated. It appears that a form is filled by the new comers during the induction sessions. The procedure on how this can be transferred to the HR database needs to be clarified. Mauro Taborelli is currently doing this inventory for the EST Division, he encounters some problem with the update.

Enrico Chiaveri underlined the need for a coherent presentation, across the Divisions, of the individual training plans and that the introduction of the new career structure will call for it.

Isabel Bejar-Alonso presented a canvas for individual training plan: it reviews the main aspects of the different training programmes and, whenever it is relevant to the person’s activity, states the present level of competency, what is required and the type of training proposed to get to this stage. Francoise Fabre asked who would fill this grid and when this would be done: the MOAS exercise is obviously a proper time to review these training plans but it is felt that it should be preceded by a top-down analysis to ensure that the training will indeed insures that the Division has all the skills required to fulfil its objectives. Enrico Chiaveri sees some similarity between the establishment of individual training plans and the succession planning, and the later is clearly a top-down exercise triggered by the Division Leader.

Mick Storr advocated for a dynamic update procedure of the training plans for what concerns technical training, to cope with the rapid changes in that domain. This was debated and, as a related item, the publicising in the Bulletin of places  available in various training sessions was criticised as triggering a demand that may not be in line with the needs.

Conclusion: The DTO’s need a common presentation of the individual training plans. The working group on “Computer tools and guideline for formatting training needs/requests” has to make a concrete proposal and the next meeting of the TEC will concentrate on that issue.

2.        External Training and standardisation of policy between the Divisions

What happens when training is only partially in the interest of the Organisation and who decides? Isabel Bejar-Alonso described the procedure followed in the ST Division:

-          Request goes to the Group Leader

-          Get objective facts: essentially when, where, cost and time

-          Study all cases of the Division in a committee

è Transparent and standard process across the groups of ST

But we have different treatments in other Divisions, and this rises cases of inequality among CERN people following the same external training …

Conclusion: Isabel asked for a working group to study the issue and to propose CERN wide rules. Paula Ribeiro, Mauro Taborelli, Francois Fluckiger, Myriam Veyrat, Mark Tavlet and Davide Vite agreed to participate.

3.        Proposal for a 2-term General Electronics course at CERN

In line with the recommendation of the 2001 CERN Training Plan (Introductory courses in technology domains currently used at CERN, Refresher courses in basic engineering), Davide Vite proposes to organise a course on electronics starting early spring 2002. Two terms would address respectively “modern trends in electronics for CERN physics” and “recent issues in integrated circuit design for physics”.  Lecturers are from EP-ATE and EP-MIC and the course content is largely based on a series of lecture given at the university of Lausanne. One foresees 8+7 sessions, 2 hours each and participants would have to enrol. HR-TD is considering making it free, but it is still an open question.

The target audience consists of CERN staff working in related fields, apprentices, students, fellows and visitors. We expect 30 to 60 participants: the course would take place in the auditorium of Bld 593, be recorded and made available on the Web-archive server. It must be clear that the course is not for experts, and that there is thus no overlap with the Academic Training programme.

Conclusion: Davide Vite will define the level of knowledge requested for the audience, and DTO’s are furthermore asked to publicise this course in their Division and to select potential candidates.

4.        MAPS: implementation and training campaign

Francoise Fabre presented a programme of training for the Divisions and Group leaders. This programme was strongly related to the application of the Administrative Circular #26 that is presently being rewritten.

Conclusion: the MAPS training described on 28/09 has to be reconsidered.

5.        Access to Web-base training

Mick Storr reviewed all the advantages of Web-based training, namely:

-          Allow to reply to requests without delay

-          Lots of potential and constant upgrade of the technique

-          Large catalogue of courses

-          Very cheap (actually 150 CHF to access > 100 courses)

-          Flexibility of the timing of the course

It has proven to be successful on many occasion but not so many people are using it. Moreover, many enrol but never access it. This is why Mick is now proposing another approach based on a “pay as you go” scheme:

-          Chose a course within a large catalogue and enrol for it

-          Once it is paid (20 to 60 CHF), the access would be valid for a period of 3 to 6 months

-          To ease the process, the responsibility of authorisation and payment can be transferred to the DTO’s.

Conclusion: the new scheme will be introduced.

                                                                                                      Sylvain Weisz