Caring about employees from the Member States.

An extended meeting of national groups took place on 15 June as a video conference. Representatives of the JINR Directorate, the Member States, heads of national groups and divisions of the Institute took part in the event.

JINR Director V. A. Matveev welcomed the participants. Having thanked the audience for active work, he noted: “The weather is great today, the mood is wonderful. All of us want to enjoy life to the fullest, and we are happy to hear news about the easing of restrictions or their removal… I have just returned from the operational meeting of the JINR Directorate. We have discussed the transition to a new work mode in which numerous fields of the Institute’s activities will be fully restored. At the same time, we should not stop but, on the contrary, we should reinforce all the precautionary measures.” Victor Anatolievich noted that in this challenging time employees from other states undergo complicated psychological adversity: they live not in their native countries, far from their relatives and friends. The Institute’s Directorate would like to make this adversity less difficult, to create an atmosphere that could help specialists from the Member States feel like they are at home among friends and comrades. And the leaders of the Institute would like to learn whether everything is being done for this purpose.

The meeting was opened by a presentation of Head of the project Gleb Stiforov who told about the progress in the implementation of the MC2 Club project. Members of the JINR Directorate, representatives of interested divisions and heads of national groups took part in the discussion of the presented results of the five-month work.

More details about the report on the MC2 project

Another very informative and urgent issue of the agenda was the results of a survey carried out among members of national groups on the issues of stay of non-Russian staff members in JINR. Assistant to Head of the JINR Science Organization & International Cooperation Office Wladislaw Chmielowski made a preliminary report. He said that the idea to conduct the survey came from the request of the Directorate to find out problems of foreign employees and work out ways to help them in these difficult times. A questionnaire of 25 questions was developed. Each question was related to a particular area of activities: information about JINR in your country, procedures of leaving your country to work at JINR, checkpoints, workplace, research facilities, canteens, relations with other employees, salary, professional development, use of grants, place of living, organizations for children, medical care, pension insurance and taxes, cultural life and sports, and etc.

125 staff members answered these questions. Thus, more than 2,5 thousand reviews have been received. Now this information requires processing, analysis and summing up. However, it is already possible to identify the most common or the most urgent problems. Thus, W. Chmielowski notes that the most urgent one is the operation of checkpoints. Employees have a lot of questions about the procedure of checking and queues. There are many proposals for the improvement of premises and parking as well. Then, the transport provision was discussed: it is necessary to widen the geography and working hours of corporate buses. More information should be given, including in English, about routes of city transport, their stops and travel time. The third popular issue was the working language. Many respondents highlighted the necessity to provide the full English “mirror” of information given in Russian in various areas of the Institute’s life: it should include signs of doors and offices, Institute’s newsletters, document management, etc.

Canteens, cafes… Of course, feedback depended mostly on who and what prefers. So, reviews were very diverse: from high prices to the wish to buy cakes in summer. However, the lack of menus and compositions of products in English somewhere does not depend on personal preferences, these are necessary things. The place of residence is also a wide topic for discussion: it included furniture employees cannot refuse in corporate apartments, the lack of subsidies for the rental of housing, queues for their provision.

Medicine is another key issue. The choice of medical institutions of the city, translation into English (there are ridiculous situations: it turns out during visits to an ophthalmologist that not everyone knows Russian alphabet), the necessity of the list of services provided by CMI and VMI.

Orhanizations for children: there are many wishes to have an opportunity of studying major subjects in English as well as to interact with the Embassies of countries and use educational opportunities provided by them. Pension insurance and taxation may be included in the list of more specific issues. Of course, there are many proposals. For example, such an obvious thing as rental of household items or kitchen corners in the laboratories with refrigerators and microwave ovens.

First JINR Vice-Director G. V. Trubnikov noted after the report: “It is in fact homework for the JINR Directorate and all the main offices. We should thank those who have done this survey. It is necessary to systematize all the questions. There are issues that may be solved in several days or a couple of weeks. But there are also problems demanding a year or two to be solved. For example, not everything depends on the Institute in terms of medicine. It is necessary to establish contacts with federal agencies, the city administration. We should find compromise solutions. In particular, the problem with checkpoints is being already tackled. You have seen that electronic lists are already introduced. The electronic pass system may start working by the autumn in the test mode. I have the following impression of this list: we are in for a lot of work. I think there is nothing impossible. I did not see anything that cannot be implemented. I am sure that we will do it by joint efforts.”

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D. V. Kamanin presented information of the Institute’s Directorate about the celebration of the 65th anniversary of JINR and the upcoming CP session. At the moment, an Order on the celebration of the 65th anniversary is being drafted, the organizing committee and the working group are being formed. Many events are planned. In this regard, it is necessary to know what events are planned in the Member States, how to combine them with celebrations in Dubna so that the benefits are mutual.

The issue of filling the JINR website with news was also raised. JINR Chief Scientific Secretary A. S. Sorin called the Institute community to contribute to the spread of scientific news from the Member States, to be active in strengthening the information field that reflects all aspects of our activities like a mirror.

The CP session will be held in the video conference format. Connection, opportunities for joining, the programme adaptation to different operating systems have been already checked. The issue of translation has also been solved.

The meeting took place on the first day of the resumption of the Institute’s operation. Not all employees returned to their workplaces. Sanitary requirements are still observed. Borders have not been opened yet. But even this two-hour discussion demonstrated how many ideas had emerged during the self-isolation, how many desire the staff had to make work at the Institute more comfortable and modern.

Galina Myalkovskaya, JINR Weekly Newspaper