Setting high quality employment conditions for early career researchers

This statement aims at putting forward recommendations for how to ensure high quality employment conditions for early career researchers (ECRs). There are many different aspects to employment quality, the employment relationship itself being a primary one. But in addition there are other general working conditions that need to be in place for the research environment to be a stimulating workplace (Rahal et al., 2023; Initiative for Science in Europe, 2022),.

We often hear that the employment of ECRs is precarious. Precarious employment comes in different forms, with amongst other aspects  lack of proper employment, unreasonably short employment periods, or part-time positions being key contributors. However, precarious employment also includes lack of equal access to a country’s social security network, lack of career perspectives and continued job insecurity, all of which  affect more than just the individual professional lives of ECRs (Wellcome, 2020). As such, precarious employment conditions are a marker of the low quality of employment conditions in the higher education sector.  

Research repeatedly shows that employment quality is not only related to employee health (including mental health) and wellbeing, but also to productivity and the quality of employees’ work outcomes. However, the academic world fails to live up to their own recommendations. Not only is this problematic for the individuals directly affected, but it is also problematic from a more general perspective, as academia asks for other sectors to implement its research findings, yet fails to do so itself (OECD, 2021).  

In the statement, we identify several recommendations to foster early career researchers’ employment quality.