Analysis of existing policy documents in all three project partner countries, other European Area of Higher Education (EHEA) countries and at the European level shows that there is a strong need to encourage and support Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing more significantly their Human resources management (HRM) systems, in order to both improve their organizational efficiency and competitive ability.In the light of these detected needs and existing policy guidance at the European level, the project has gathered four HEIs from three participating countries and one Quality Assurance agency in higher education in order to prepare a set of intellectual outputs which would support these new developments to both participating and ‘non-participating’ HEIs across Europe. The partners were chosen to represent both ‘advanced’ and ‘learning’ countries which still need to make progress in the development of HRM and / or are committed to enhancing their fairly new practices of HRM. The choice of academic partners from three countries was motivated by their significant role in the international and national higher education systems, as well as strategic policy developments. In choosing the project partners, attention was also paid to cover different perspectives, and therefore included both private and public HEIs, representing in this way a mix of possible methodologies for putting an efficient HRM system in place.The project is designed to firstly map existing HRM policies and practices at HEIs in the EU and then conduct organizational diagnostics across HEIs in partnering countries to collect information from the field regarding the specificities of HRM function in higher education. Both of these groups of findings will feed into development of National guidelines for developing HRM in HEIs (both, Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences) in all three participating countries. Furthermore, these outputs will serve as a sound basis for tailoring specific HRM procedures at the individual partner HEIs as a way of implementation of a part of national guidelines. Finally, a benchmarking tool will be constructed and validated in order to serve to all European HEIs wishing to measure the level of development of their own HRM functions and to motivate management to engage in further improvement work.The project is expected to have immediate impact on the project partners and participants and non-participating HEIs as its target group in terms of enhanced awareness of the significance of the HRM function for the quality of HEIs provisions, assisting them at the same time with a set of highly usable tools to initiate changes in their organizational environment. By development of an online self-assessment tool as an open educational resource (OER), the project directly provides European added value, offering an innovative tool for benchmarking to all EU HEIs interested in betterment of their internal HRM practices.
Context/background of the project In the light of the 2011 EU Modernisation Agenda's key policy issues providing guidance to Member States and HEIs on how to support modernisation efforts of HEIs in order to maximise the contribution of the higher education sector to Europe’s growth and jobs. The Modernisation Agenda states that enabling better working conditions including transparent and fair recruitment procedures, introduction of incentives for HEIs to invest in continuous professional development for their staff, and better recognition and reward of teaching and research excellence is essential to ensure that Europe produces, attracts and retains the highly competent and motivated academic staff it needs. Thus adapting internal quality assurance mechanisms at the HEIs to include evidence-based human resource management processes would contribute to the efficiency of the governance of the HEIs which will help them to fulfil their role in society and contribute to Europe's prosperity. Objectives Objectives of the project are aligned with the following horizontal (sectoral) priorities of the Erasmus + programme in 2016: Supporting the implementation of reforms in line with the 2011 EU Strengthening the recruitment, selection and induction of Educators Sustainable investment, performance and efficiency in education and training In the light of the mentioned policy priorities at the European level, the project has aimed to achieve four general objectives: • To improve the organizational development, efficiency and effectiveness of HEIs as well as to increase its global competitiveness. •To encourage and improve Higher Education Institution’s contribution to economic growth and social development by enhancing the quality and relevance of human capital development in higher education. • To stimulate excellence of European HEIs staff through appropriate academic human resources management. The benchmarking tool constructed as an Open Educational Resource (OER) will enable European HEIs to use it as a mean of continuous improvement of their HRM system and increase of their competitive ability. • To foster further development of EHEA by adding to existing communication channels and mutual exchange of sound practices. Number and profile of participating organisations The project has been carried out by five partner organization from three countries – Croatia, Austrian and Finland. The choice of academic partners from three countries was motivated by their significant role in the international and national higher education systems and in policy or strategic developments (Danube University Krems, Austria and University of Tampere, School of Management, Finland, both of which are providers of Master’s Degree Programme in Research and Innovation in Higher Education (MARIHE)) and by the criterion of substantial expertise in the field of HRM as well as international project-based experience and good practice (Croatian partners - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of University of Rijeka and Algebra University College). Description of undertaken main activities The main project activities have been grouped into 5 working packages (WP) as will be explained in detail in section 5.1 Results and impact attained The project have achieved immediate impact on the project partners and participants from other HEIs as its target group in terms of enhanced awareness of the significance of the HRM function for the internal quality system of the HEIs, which is also a requirement of the Part 1 of the ESG standards. At the system level an increase of the understanding the importance of human resource management in HEIs has been observed in all three countries during multiplier events as well as following the events as a number of HEIs informed the ASHE to have institutionalized a function of vice dean for human resources. Also, the results of the project our complementary to the policy measure Program financing of public higher education institutions in 2018/2019. - 2021./2022. instituted by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education with the aim of achieving a result-based funding of teaching, scientific and artistic activities. Furthermore, creation of benchmark tool that enables all HEIs to evaluate their HRM processes has been widely disseminated among HEIs and the results collected will be a source of evidence-based position for developing policy measures at both institutional and sectoral level.