WPA results at Aarhus BSS

The results of this year’s WPA survey at Aarhus University have just been published. At Aarhus BSS, many employees took part in the survey - 76 per cent at the departments and 87 per cent in the administrative centre. For the first time, the WPA included questions on both the physical and psychological work environment. The results show that Aarhus BSS is performing well on the survey’s four key indicators; overall satisfaction, motivation and commitment, loyalty and willingness to act as an ambassador for your workplace i.e. how likely you are to recommend your workplace to others.

Four out of five employees at Aarhus BSS indicate that they are generally satisfied and have high levels of commitment and motivation in their work. They find their work meaningful, feel that they receive help and support from their units and are generally thriving at work.

However, the survey also shows that there are still areas where more work needs to be done. Among other things, the WPA reveals that many employees experience an imbalance between their tasks and the time available to perform these tasks. Several employees also experience stress. A number of employees ask for more dialogue and feedback from the day-to-day management, while an increasing number of employees (one out of ten) sometimes experience abusive or derogatory speech incidents. A small part of the school’s employees have also experienced bullying/harassment and discrimination due to age, gender or religion. 

The dean:  Good results, but room for improvement

Dean Thomas Pallesen is pleased that so many employees took part in the survey, and he takes the results very seriously:

“I would like to thank everyone who participated in this year’s WPA survey at the departments and in the administrative centre,” he says. “The broad participation provides us with a good starting point for our ongoing efforts to promote a good physical and psychological work environment while maintaining our goals of ensuring high quality in our research, teaching, stakeholder relations and administrative services. Overall, the results are very positive, but we must focus our efforts to improve ourselves in the areas where we are doing less well. For one thing, it is absolutely vital that we act on the fact that some employees are experiencing bullying and harassment.”

What are the next steps?

In the time to come, the individual departments and the administrative centre must develop local actions plans for how to follow up on the WPA. A series of local dialogue meetings will be held. Here the employees will get the opportunity to contribute to the local action plans and focus areas.

In addition, the school’s WPA advisory group will be discussing possible cross-organisational initiatives.

Would you like to know more?

You can stay up-to-date on the WPA follow-up process on the school’s WPA webpage. Here you will find the WPA reports and any news about the 2019 WPA.