VALUES AND TRANSPARENCY

The Ombuds Office is a confidential and independent resource for all CISPA members. We want to deal constructively with concerns and conflicts related to your experience and work at the CISPA.

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.

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 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.

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 port of call 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 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.