Buddy Rule
As your employer, it is of the utmost importance to us to guarantee the health and safety of our employees in the workplace. This is also in accordance with the Dutch Working Conditions Act. In the context of risk prevention, we have established that the procedure for testing participants at MPI locations outside office hours can be improved. We believe that we can better ensure safety by introducing a buddy system. This implies that testing during off-hours can only be done when, in addition to the participant, at least two people are present in the lab (the so-called '2-people-after-hours' or 'buddy' rule). You can find the specific rules that apply below.
- At all times between 6pm and 8:30am, in weekends, and on public holidays, the experimental subject has to be supervised by the experimenter and one additional person ('buddy').
- The buddy system applies to ALL labs
- The experimenter is responsible for finding a buddy
- The buddy is in the lab to be able to intervene as quickly as possible
- No buddy is needed when two researchers are in the same lab area. However, keep in mind that you are still each other's buddy, even if, for example, one of your subjects cancels or when experiments only partially overlap!
- When colleagues participate in MPI experiments, no buddy is needed. In this case, bot should be in the same room or in directly adjacent rooms with the door to the recording booth left open, so that the subject and researcher are not fully separated.
- It is the responsibility of the experimenter to make sure that safety procedures are known to both experimenter and subject
- Together with the new buddy system, lab-testing calendars are implemented in all the MPI-labs. All testing sessions need to be recorded in the lab-testing calendar
The directorate and COO are fully aware that this puts an extra claim on the time available to all of you. However, this rule has to be implemented for reasons of general safety and against the risks of occupational accidents or harassment claims (the latter can apply to both the participant as the experimenter).
Lab-testing calendar
In the lab-testing calendar, you need to fill in the date, time, name of experimenter, which experiment, subject number, name of the buddy, initials experimenter, and, during off-hours, initials of the buddy.