ADVOCACY
Our contacts for employee participation, fairness, and equal opportunity: On this page, you’ll get to know the key committees and contact persons who represent your interests at CISPA—from the Works Council and ombudspersons to the Equal Opportunities Officers.
At CISPA there’s currently one central works council for all locations. It represents the interests of the employees and is elected for four years.
If you would like to contact the Works Council, you can contact the individual members or use the general e-mail address of the Works Council.
CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Der Betriebsrat (vertraulich)
Stuhlsatzenhaus 5
66123 Saarbrücken
The Ombuds Office is a confidential and independent resource for all CISPA employees. We want to deal constructively with concerns and conflicts related to your experience and work at CISPA.
CISPA employees can contact the Ombuds Office personally or via the e-mail address ombudsoffice@cispa.de. Only the two ombudspersons have access to this mailbox. All inquiries will be treated highly confidentially.
In addition to the Ombuds Office, CISPA has a number of additional contacts who can help with specific questions, challenges or conflicts. CISPA also maintains a Whistleblower System to support our commitment to trust and integrity. CISPA employees can visit the internal wiki for more information about this.
CISPA strives to be an inclusive, fair, and supportive workplace for all its employees. This is one of the reasons why our center has signed the Diversity Charta/Charta der Vielfalt. The first contact point for any questions concerning gender equality and equal opportunities at CISPA is our Equal Opportunities Office. It is also responsible for the implementation of CISPA’s Equality Plan.
The Anti-Discrimination Agency has been set up to protect against discrimination in accordance with the General Act on Equal Treatment (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz – AGG).
CISPA is strongly committed to ensuring that no person is discriminated against within the company on the basis of gender, ethnic or social origin, age, disability, sexual orientation or identity, religion, ideology, or political opinion. We promote a culture of respect that is based on respectful and appreciative interaction with one another. We value fairness, equal treatment, respectful communication, and cooperation—both in everyday collaboration and when addressing conflicts.
In order to fulfill this mandate, CISPA has set up an internal complaints agency, but it is also possible to contact an external complaints agency. The Legal and Licenses staff unit is responsible for accepting and processing internal complaints relating to the AGG.
Have you experienced or witnessed discrimination? Write to us at agg@cispa.de
Of course you have the possibility to contact the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency. Find detailed information at https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/
The Employee Voice Contact Point is managed by the Personnel and Organizational Development staff unit. It is a dedicated platform enabling employees to share their ideas, suggestions, feedback, and concerns in a supportive environment. Our mission is to foster a culture of open communication, ensuring that every employee has the opportunity to voice their perspectives and concerns.
Our professional lives are all too often characterized by uncertainty when dealing with colleagues, as well as by misunderstandings and the resulting disagreements. As conflicts are a part of life, we should see them as an opportunity to recognize other perspectives through constructive discussion. In this way, they offer us the potential to develop further. It is therefore important to learn how to deal with them constructively.
CISPA is convinced that dealing openly with these uncertainties, disputes or conflicts and working through them can maintain mental and physical health as well as motivation and joy at work.
The Early Career Support Team (shortly ECAS), offering CISPA early career researchers as well as their supervisors a wide range of different services. The department is the central contact point for all early career researchers at CISPA and supports them in questions concerning their doctorate or other relevant topics with regard to their work as well as career.
The Doctoral Representatives at CISPA represent all doctoral researchers. The goal is to have and work for a great working environment for doctoral researchers. This includes offering to help get in contact with the appropriate instances and accompanying you through the process of getting support. This covers cases where problems between a supervior and a doctoral researcher arise or in other constellations where doctoral researchers find support helpful.
The Data Protection Officer advises and supports CISPA in all matters relating to data protection. He works to ensure compliance with applicable data protection regulations, promotes the responsible handling of personal data, and advises employees on data protection matters.
The IT Security Officer advises and supports CISPA in all matters relating to IT security. He works to identify security risks at an early stage, implement appropriate protective measures, and ensure compliance with relevant security requirements in day-to-day operations.
The AI Officer advises and supports CISPA in all matters relating to the use of artificial intelligence. He promotes the responsible and compliant use of AI systems and helps ensure that both opportunities and risks are appropriately considered.
The Inclusion Officers represent CISPA as an employer in all matters concerning people with disabilities. They work to remove barriers, promote equal opportunities, and support the implementation of legal requirements relating to inclusion and participation.
The Representative for disabled persons represents the interests of employees with severe disabilities and those with equivalent status at CISPA. He provides support and advice on matters relating to participation and employment and promotes equal opportunities and the removal of barriers in the workplace.
This contact point offers support for transgender employees as well as their coworkers. Many transgender people choose not to disclose their gender identity due to fears of discrimination, social exclusion, or professional disadvantages. This contact point aims to provide practical and useful information and thereby contribute to an inclusive working environment.
Our working life at CISPA is based on mutual respect, cooperation, trust and recognition. A prerequisite for good working relationships is compliance with the current regulations, directives, external and internal policies and guidelines, as compliance with rules and regulations promotes and maintains our mutual trust.
It is necessary to respond to misconduct and to ensure compliant behavior in order to protect CISPA and all employees. However, this requires knowledge of these issues.
The Whistleblower System offers employees the opportunity to report issues and provide information. The report (and subsequent contact in the event of follow-up questions) can be made either in your own name or anonymously. It can include specific information or reasonable suspicions regarding actual or potential misconduct that has already happened or is very likely to happen.
