"The arrival of the ombudsperson represents the culmination of the development we started three years ago with an equal opportunities survey at our faculty. Our aim is to create a favourable working and learning environment that will attract more talent to the field of electrical and computer engineering, especially among women or researchers and study applicants from abroad. I am sure that Zuzana Labudová as an ombudsperson will contribute significantly to an equal and safe environment by being an impartial contact for all people who study or work at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering," said Prof. Petr Páta, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU. Dean Páta also recognizes the ombudsperson as an asset because she will inform the academic community about trends in the field of equal opportunities.
Mgr. Zuzana Labudová, Ph.D., MBA, studied Language and Literary Culture at the Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové and Gender Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, where she also received her PhD in Applied Ethics. Professionally, she has been involved in education all her life, especially in the field of equal opportunities. She leads a team implementing equal opportunities audits, gender audits, and diversity audits. She works in the non-governmental non-profit organization called Osvětová beseda, which focuses mainly on the education of teachers and school managers. For the last two years, Dr. Labudová has served as an ombudsperson at The Crop Research Institute in Prague. Since September, she has been an ombudsperson for students and employees at the FEE CTU and also at the University of Pardubice.
Interview with Zuzana Labudová
Zuzana Labudová presents her priorities in the following interview, where you can also read about the process of dealing with complaints or where you can find the new ombudsperson.
You joined FEE in September, what are your priorities for the coming period?
Since I am the first ombudsperson at the faculty, the most important thing in the initial period is to establish the position and introduce my role, competencies and powers to all the people who study and work here. At the same time, a functional reporting mechanism based on a methodology for dealing with individual submissions needs to be established. My aim is that everyone who contacts me or at whom the incoming complaints are directed will know in advance how I will proceed. It is important to me that the whole process of dealing with submissions, which is a core part of my work, is as transparent and predictable as possible.
What will be your role as an ombudsperson?
The position of an ombudsperson is established by universities and other institutions (and more recently and increasingly also by companies) as an independent institute designed to ensure the protection of the rights of students and staff. It follows that my main role will be to help people studying or working at FEE to resolve problems related to their work or studies in a way that ensures equal treatment and a level playing field. Independence and impartiality in my work are ensured, among other things, by the fact that I stand completely outside the faculty structure. De facto, I see it as an advantage that I come completely from the outside and do not know much about the internal faculty environment.
Essentially, it can be said that my work will consist of three main areas, which are interconnected and build on each other. The first area is receiving, investigating and resolving complaints and mediating disputes and conflicts related to work or study at the faculty. Students and employees can contact me if they feel that they have been discriminated against, that they do not have a level playing field compared to other people working and studying at FEE, that they have been victims of bullying, mobbing, bossing, sexual harassment and other discriminatory behaviour, or that they have been or are being treated inappropriately by someone at the faculty. Investigations into these complaints may reveal the need to address some issues systemically, which is the second area of my work, i.e. conceptual work on social safety and promoting equality at the faculty. And the third area of my work is based on these two, which is enlightenment and education. The atmosphere at the faculty is created by all of us who are a part of it, so I think it is important that as much information as possible reaches as many people as possible and that we discuss all aspects of social security at FEE with as wide a spectrum of people as possible.
My position is not a part of the executive management of the faculty. I am empowered to seek explanations and opinions from all people studying and working at the faculty and to check the reality of the situation when dealing with submissions and carrying out conceptual work. However, my work will not result in any decisions. If I find a particular submission to be legitimate or identify the need for a systemic solution, I will contact the Dean and recommend an appropriate course of action. Executive action is no longer my task, the decision will be up to the faculty management.
How will students and staff be able to contact you?
Anyone can contact me by email at ombuds@fel.cvut.cz, after which we will agree on the next course of action: if, when and where we will meet in person or online, or if we will continue to communicate in writing. It is also possible to send me a submission by mail or leave it in the filing office of the faculty. If anyone would like to come in person, they can use my office hours on Wednesdays from 1 to 3 pm in Dejvice, room T2:A4-11a.
Resolving conflict situations or inappropriate behaviour is also part of your agenda. How will the anonymity of those who contact you be treated?
First of all, I would like to assure all employees and students that I will be dealing with anonymous submissions, i.e. those whose author cannot be identified even by me. In such cases, however, my investigation options may be limited. For an effective investigation, it is naturally better if I know the identity of the person contacting me. At each stage, I will ask whether the person who has contacted me wishes to remain anonymous or give me permission to reveal his or her identity, of course only to the most necessary range of people, especially in sensitive matters. And we will discuss what each partial decision to remain anonymous or to come out of anonymity will mean for that person. In any case, I will always respect if someone does not want to reveal their identity because confidentiality of information and personal data is one of the basic principles of my work. As part of maintaining anonymity, it is possible to meet with me outside the faculty buildings and communicate outside the faculty system. Every effort on my part to maintain anonymity during the investigation extends to the persons to whom the submissions will be directed. Everyone should have a level playing field also in the case of submission investigations.
What will the whole investigation procedure look like?
When someone contacts me, through whatever channel, we will first agree on how we will communicate with each other and whether the person wants to remain anonymous or not in the investigation. I will then receive the submission, ask everything I need to know at that moment, and I will also want to know the author's idea of a solution. I will then initiate an investigation. I will seek the views of the persons to whom the submission is directed, asking for their perspective and motivation and their willingness to address the complaint. If necessary, I will ask for testimony or the views of persons in a comparable situation or relevant internal documents. Where it makes sense in my view, I will offer mediation to both parties - agreement is the best solution in the vast majority of cases. If the investigation ends without agreement, or if it is a complaint where this solution is not an option, I will summarise the results of the investigation, together with a recommendation for an appropriate course of action, in a report which I will forward to the Dean. I will, of course, inform both the person who contacted me and the person concerned of the results of the investigation. If, in my view, there is a need to treat the matter systemically in connection with the complaint, I will propose an appropriate blanket solution to the faculty management. My aim is, among other things, to act preventively, i.e. so that inappropriate or discriminatory behaviour ideally does not occur at all.
At FEE, men predominate, both among students and employees. In your work, will you strive to increase the proportion of women at our faculty?
My job is to promote equal opportunities for all people, regardless of gender, ethnic or social origin, health status or any of the other factors that can cause unequal treatment or discrimination. So, if I am successful in my work, it may mean that the reputation of FEE as a faculty where gender does not matter in admission to study, study itself or work, but performance does, and where women are as welcome as men because no one here suffers from the prejudice that girls are not suited to study and work in technology. The faculty has clearly and publicly declared its interest in the diversity of the study and research teams since before my arrival, and I see the introduction of the ombudsperson position as part of this approach.
One of the key recommendations these days is work-life balance. What is your personal prescription for work-life balance?
I guess I could answer that I am a bit of a shoemaker’s child in this respect because I work a lot, I like to work, and work makes up the vast majority of my days. However, this is mainly due to the fact that two of my children are already grown up and the third is inexorably heading towards adulthood, so they don't need as much of my attention. My experience is that it's not so much about how much one studies or works, but how one lives one's life, whether that suits them. One of the problems that people at the faculty can have is that they don't have time for the things that are important to them because of their studies or work - that can detract from their quality of life. So to answer the question, I try to do as much as I can of what I enjoy and find fulfilling, and in my case, that's largely what I do. At the same time, I try to listen to myself, and when the work becomes too much even for me, I do something else, too - most often walking and contemplating, listening to music, reading, planning and experiencing nice things, and talking to people who are a joy to talk to. But you can probably guess that the subject of my thoughts, reading and conversations is often my work again. But I completely understand that someone else’s experiences are entirely different.
