The International Youth Nuclear Congress (IYNC) is an evolving and growing organization and therefore must periodically mature adequate plans, financial models and institutional structure towards the future, but also develop indicators allowing to assess the impact of its activities becoming more effective and efficient upon serving the world young nuclear generation and communicating the benefits of nuclear science and applications during the next decades.
Within most countries with a sizeable nuclear industry, there are clear demographic challenges due to aging workforces and a lack of mid-career professionals to mentor incoming engineers and scientists. It is therefore important to understand what the young generation needs and what organizations like IYNC and the YGNs can do to serve their proposes, to enhance their professional growth, and empower them to face the challenges of the years to come.
The IYNC has to play an important part in this effort by taking a global pulse check of these young professionals’ ambitions, worries, and observations to build a comprehensive report. In addition, in order for the IYNC to develop a proper institutional strategy allowing the organization to plan and be prepared for the coming decade, it is essential to understand the current global mindset of young nuclear professionals. Surveying members and potential members is an excellent method to achieve this. IYNC will develop a series of surveys trying to measure what is important for young people working in the nuclear industry today and what their future intentions are. The project called World Young Generation in Nuclear Thermometer will develop a set of dynamic surveys that will target two groups: students and young professionals. The surveys aim to provide IYNC with extensive, clear, and useful information on what the current YGN is thinking and feeling.
These surveys will measure what is important for young people working in the nuclear industry and students, and how they feel about the future. Questions will cover their fears, main pitfalls they can see in their careers, what would they change if they could and how? What is it that they believe, would improve their careers and the industry itself? How can IYNC and related organizations serve any of these purposes?
IYNC will publish the data together with a clear description of the methodology implemented and supported by statistical and social theory, and the analysis performed correlating other databases. It is IYNC intention to periodically develop this project and publish the results delivering a solid analysis showing also the evolution of the indicators over the years, which aims at becoming a reference for the industry.
If you are interested in this project contact cristian.vega@iync.org.
