Virtual Visit to Czechia: Improving job quality in a tight labour market

Maria Jepsen is Eurofound’s Deputy Director, appointed on 1 November 2019. She coordinates the Agency’s programme development. Prior to this, she was Director of the research department at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), and assistant professor and research fellow at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). She has also taught as an external lecturer at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. She is currently also associate professor in labour economics at ULB. Her main research interests include gender studies, the impact of welfare states on labour supply, wages and working conditions, and the development of the European social dimension. Ms Jepsen has been a member of various committees, councils and advisory boards at national and international level on employment, social, gender and research issues. She has also served as a coordinator on the European Commission tripartite advisory committee on health and safety at work. She holds a PhD in Economics and a Master’s degree in Econometrics from the Free University of Brussels (ULB).

Mary McCaughey is Head of Information and Communication in Eurofound. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and the College of Europe, Bruges, she started work in Brussels with Europolitics and the Wall Street Journal Europe. She worked with the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA) in South Africa during the country’s transition to democracy, and in 1998 she took up the post of spokesperson with the Delegation of the European Union in Pretoria, heading up its press and information department during the negotiation of the EU–South Africa free trade agreement. Following the end of the Kosovo War, she worked as a communications consultant for the European Agency for Reconstruction in Serbia. She took up the post of Editor-in-Chief in Eurofound in 2003.

Agnès Parent-Thirion is a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound, overseeing the planning and development of working conditions research. She plays a key role in the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), co-leading the preparation of and leading the questionnaire development for EWCS 2030. Her research interests include job quality, work organisation, gender, psychosocial risks and the impact of the green and digital transitions on working life. With over two decades of experience working on European comparative surveys, Agnès specialises in questionnaire development, coding of occupations, quality control and analysis. She is a graduate in economics and management from Paris IX Dauphine and Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne universities and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. She has also completed specialised training on AI leadership (MIT Sloan Executive Education) and the major challenges of transition (Campus de la Transition). Before joining Eurofound, she worked for a number of years in the European Commission.