Posted by Another competency that we can measure in researchers, self-work organization. Colloquially, we can see or somehow tell if someone is well-organized or disorganized. Just how do we measure it?
We associate self-work organization directly with the ability to plan tasks in time and execute them according to plan, possibly reacting to unforeseen obstacles to the plan. Surveys of managers show that only 10% of people in managerial positions do not complain about lack of time, the rest would need an extra few to several hours. The result of poor time planning is excessive fatigue, lack of time for the family and failure to achieve desired goals. Managers most often do not take into account the curves of work performance, psychophysical fitness, and the distribution of concentration during working hours.
The same is true of researchers, who by definition work all the time during the day, even though they sometimes have time off from teaching or writing scientific texts. In our system for assessing researcher competence, we defined self-work organization as follows:
Planning, organizing and monitoring the completion of one’s own tasks by setting priorities and goals with optimal use of resources.
Accordingly, we have identified 5 specific indicators:
- Ability to formulate goals
- Action planning (priorities, schedules, scenarios, resources)
- Use of support from others
- Monitoring the course of work and adapting to the situation
- Analyzing the effectiveness of the tasks carried out
We assess each of these indicators with a 5-degree behavioral scale. For example, we rate the indicator “Ability to formulate goals” with the scale:
- Imprecisely formulates the goals and the next stages of implementation.
- Sometimes indicates only the general objectives of the goals and the stages and indicators of their implementation.
- Precisely states both the objectives and the stages and indicators of their implementation.
- Helps others to precisely formulate goals and the stages of their implementation.
- Precisely sets milestones and indicators for achievement of goals across the university and for individual units/teams.
We placed the competency “Organization of own work” in 2 research profiles with the following weighting (scale from 1 to 5):
- Assistant (R1) – weight 3
- Assistant Professor (R2) – weight 3
How does this work in practice, check and measure your competencies with the tools available here: