Recognition & Rewards

Just when you think the nadir of disdain for academics at TU Delft has been reached, an even greater degree of idiocy is poured upon us: the second Recognition & Rewards Culture Barometer.

The email from the Executive Board inviting us to fill in the questionnaire contains a second paragraph that starts as follows: ‘the recent years matter. After all, this is also about your career’. Did nobody notice that the beginning of the first sentence is missing? On top of that sloppy communication, I am highly annoyed by the patronising, tut-tutting tone normally reserved for addressing toddlers. The consultancy firm Beren$chot adopts precisely the same tone: ‘Work is being done to establish a culture change in your institution […] Your opinion is crucial.’

Beren$chot was hired to investigate what we have experienced in recent years regarding the ‘new balance in the recognition and rewards for academics’ introduced in 2019. I can summarise it in a single word: zilch. Nothing has changed. The only real criterion for promotion remains whether it is bestowed upon you. It has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with whether management happens to like you. Unfortunately, that aspect is absent from Beren$chot’s questionnaire.

Information about Recognition & Rewards can be found in the Paper Room for Everyone’s Talent and the Roadmap Room for Everyone’s Talent in Practice. The texts are embellished with infantile illustrations. We see a diverse and inclusive group of four smiling people exchanging a high five. In terms of age, however, this assembly seems rather less diverse – but after a certain age, your smile tends to disappear in this organisation. Another illustration raises questions about equality: the man with the goatee appears to carry as much weight in the balance as the woman, the man of colour and the red-haired man combined. Apparently, that is not a problem, as they continue to smile. Perhaps it reflects Beren$chot’s personnel policy, where 46% of the 339 consultants (in Dutch) are women and 96% are lily-white.

What, in fact, is the difference between recognition, reward and appreciation?

In addition to woolly themes such as ‘diversifying and vitalising career paths’ and ‘achieving balance between individuals and the collective’, there are also concrete statements, such as ‘In general, I feel I get recognition/rewarded/appreciated for the work that I do’. These are three separate questions. Are there really people who answer them differently? What, in fact, is the difference between recognition, reward and appreciation? So small, apparently, that in the Dutch version the last two questions have been swapped.

The question ‘It is generally speaking clear for me which criteria are used by my organisation for promotion’ can easily be answered with ‘yes’. But what is probably expected is an answer based on criteria such as teaching, research, leadership and impact. The criteria that actually determine promotion in practice (brown-nosing and obedience) are absent.

A glossy report on the current ‘barometer reading’ of the Recognition & Rewards programme will doubtlessly soon appear. I predict that the conclusion will read: ‘We are on the right track, but there are still a few points requiring attention’.

The questionnaire is now closed, although it could be submitted an unlimited number of times. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a renowned – not my adjective – research consultancy.