Building up the ITER team

An organization's most important asset is its staff and here at ITER we are committed building the best team possible: one that is reliable, efficient, and above all one that thinks of itself as a real team.

The team continues to build up rapidly at Cadarache. This month the ITER staff will count 258 and soon this will reach 300. This has meant that another set of buildings has had to be erected so that the team is now spread over four locations. We need to make sure that the staff have opportunities to get to know each other and build up a good team spirit. Internal communications are extremely important and these are being developed by the Communications Division.

We also need a method of assessing how well our staff are doing and so management has introduced a staff appraisal system that has just started to be implemented with the full cooperation of the newly elected staff representatives. Early February saw the start of the necessary training for line management who are now engaged in interviews with their colleagues with the aim of completing the exercise at the end of March.

It was in the same context that we organized an "off-site seminar" at Cassis at the end of February with the senior management and office directors in order to identify near term organizational goals and performance goals of each member. This was the first team building exercise at management level, and I believe looking at the many new arrivals these days this sort of exercise could be useful at department level as well.

Of course, all this has to happen while maintaining our busy project schedule. The assessment exercise is an excellent opportunity for managers and staff alike to take the time to have a full discussion of how they feel work is going and of any changes they feel could contribute to the efficiency of our organization.