Developing an effective ERA talent pipeline

The European Research and Innovation system needs to optimise its support for the constant flow-through of highly skilled talents to match the demand of society and the economy. Establishing an enhanced framework for researchers' careers within the EU towards a pipeline of highly skilled, creative, and resilient talents will accelerate the achievement of a knowledge-based society and economy.

The talent pipeline’s main initiator remains the curiosity-driven approach to science, delivering creative and resilient individuals that can cope with change, for the benefit of society as a whole. The autonomy of organisations that are at the basis of the talent pipeline is an additional essential success factor for the ERA to provide visible value through excellence in research and innovation.

The framework aims at addressing: (i) the recognition of the research profession and PhD qualifications within and outside academia, the structuring of the researcher scientific career (i.e. to improve interoperability between academia and other employers), (ii) the diversification of the careers of talents trained as researcher, (iii) solutions to the precariousness of researchers’ careers in academia including a model tenure-track system accompanied by possible standard principles, and (iv) strengthened interaction with business to facilitate access to the labour market.

The common framework for research careers is expected to be based on dynamic competence profiles of researchers in various stages of their diverse careers in order to enable widespread recognition of the competences that PhD trainees and postdocs have obtained, both within and outside academia independent of sector or discipline and geographical location. It should be translated in the new European competence framework[[COM(2020)628, Commission Communication, A new ERA for Research and Innovation]], which will need to be mainstreamed across Europe.

We expect projects to take measures to improve flow-through of talent within academia and to and from the non-academic sector or to other highly needed positions in academia, to (i) improve transferable skills training, involving non-academic actors in education and training of researchers from the onset, (ii) improve talent transfer to actors in the surrounding ecosystem, (iii) improve value creation practices among higher education institutions, (iv) communicate about the competences and qualifications of researchers and their talents to economic actors and society as a whole, (v) initiatives enabling the sustainable and dynamic interaction within and between the ecosystem actors for knowledge production, circulation and use, and stimulating career fluidity through inter-institutional and inter-sectoral mobility (bi-directionally), (vi) embed additional elements in the assessment schemes for both organisations and individuals at all career stages, (vii) propose methodologies on how to introduce skills requirements from the business, social and public sector to academia.

Activities should include the establishment of pilot (for instance) local talent management centres and training hubs that strengthen involvement of the non-academic sector in defining the priorities of researchers’ training and lifelong learning upskilling. Attention should be paid to addressing gender equality related issues throughout the different strands of the proposed framework.

Duration: The action should be no longer than 2 years.