EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

162 Equality Guide
tion is the major goal, when one does not know what responses are likely and wishes to
form impressions that may be tested more thoroughly in later research.” 189
In our case, if you want to test the policy against practice, a quantitative questionnaire
needs to be developed. Certain items (questions) are asked and the employee can choose
from several answers. A preliminary explorative research (or a thorough literature study)
is needed to make sure that the list of answers is exhaustive (=no other possibilities exist).
‘From who’ is the population that you will study. This can be the entire staff or just some
statutes. One can analyse the personnel members who are present or the ones that are
leaving the organization. This last sample is a great source of information: apart from
investigating why a person leaves the organization, one can also check potential differences
in perception.
Within this module, access was granted to the central exit survey for researchers. Furthermore,
a questionnaire was developed to study the career opportunities of the academic
personnel at the Faculty of Theology. Both will be discussed in part 4.2. Tool: Survey
Career Management.
4.1.3.2. Policy
From a process view one needs to test the policy on gender neutrality. This entails different
aspects, e.g. can all information be gathered by the researcher or employees (transparency),
how was/is the policy developed (gender neutrality, objectivity) and what results
can be drawn from the policy executed (effectiveness)? This means all procedures and
structures regarding career management need to be scrutinized.
Within this module this was the case for the ZAP and ATP. The ABAP does not know a
real promotional structure as their employment depends on funding. For the ATP, a
transparent career plan exists. We chose to gain access to the job classification project, as
this is the main HR-tool for this statute. A sex-neutral job classification system was developed
(see 4.3. Tool: Gender-aware job descriptions). For the ZAP the promotional procedures
were checked within the module and communicated to the HR-department with
suggestions for improvement. This means that for the appointment and promotion-structure
the procedure was mapped and evaluated on transparency, objectivity and effectiveness.
The main obstacles remain the lack of clarity in promotion/appointment criteria and
an imbalance in the composition of the decision-making units.
The procedure and outcomes of the five-yearly evaluation of the ZAP were analysed. It is
determined by decree 190 since 1999 that the job performance of academic staff members
needs to be evaluated at least once in every five years. The following example illustrates
how this check was realized:
189 Herzog, T.R. (1996), op. cit.
190 Decreet betreffende het onderwijs X(I), 18 mei 1999.