WPA 2025: It’s almost time to evaluate your well-being at work
From 25 February, it will be time to conduct another workplace assessment at AU – known as a WPA. Here you can read more about the process.
Every three years, Aarhus University conducts a workplace assessment (WPA), which helps to evaluate the well-being of staff and the work environment at AU, and which also highlights any aspects of the work environment that managers and employees should focus on together.
You will be asked about your work situation, your professional development, your daily management and, not least, your physical working conditions. This year, the WPA also includes questions on inclusion, and the questions about offensive behaviour have been expanded so that you can provide a more detailed response. The questionnaire has been approved by AU’s Main Liaison Committee (HSU), Main Occupational Health and Safety Committee (HAMU), and the senior management team.
The results of the WPA will form the basis for follow-up work to develop and improve the work environment in units across the university.
Preparations for the 2025 questionnaire are well underway – and you can expect to hear more about the process from your local management in the near future. You can also find more information at au.dk/WPA.
On Tuesday 25 February, all employees at AU will receive a link to the WPA 2025 questionnaire. You then have until Wednesday 12 March to complete it.
WPA workshops for managers and members of the occupational health and safety committees and liaison committees.
Managers and members of occupational health and safety committees and liaison committees play a key role in following up on the WPA. If you belong to this group, you can already sign up for one of HR’s WPA workshops, which will be held between January and April 2025. These workshops offer advice on how to work with the WPA at the local level. Read more and sign up using this link.
Good to know about WPA 2025
What is a WPA?
Ensuring a good work environment is a shared responsibility that requires ongoing focus from both managers and employees – all year round. A WPA is a statutory survey that evaluates the university’s work environment and the well-being of its staff, and it is used as a tool to work systematically with the work environment. Most of the questionnaire is the same for everybody at AU, but some faculties have also chosen to include a small number of faculty-specific questions.
Anonymity on questions about the psychological work environment
The WPA will include questions about both the physical and the psychological work environment. As always, the responses about the psychological work environment will be anonymous. This is ensured by using anonymity limits, which means that results will only appear in the report if a certain number of employees have answered the question. In order to facilitate specific and practical follow-up, the responses about the physical work environment will not be anonymous.
The anonymity limit has been adjusted to align with general standards
Based on recommendations from HSU and HAMU, the senior management team has this year chosen to change the anonymity limits from 10 to 5 responses for the general questions about the psychological and physical working environment. This will ensure that more units receive a report. An anonymity limit of 5 is a general standard for comparable organisations. For questions regarding offensive behaviour, the anonymity limit will remain at 40 responses, as it was in 2022.
Your responses matter
When you complete the WPA questionnaire, you help to identify and highlight the areas that management and employees can work on together at the local level. The more employees who respond, the better basis we will have for a good dialogue and effective follow-up. By completing the WPA questionnaire, you will therefore help to create the best possible conditions for a good workplace.
Follow-up through dialogue
The results of WPA 2025 will be published on 7 April. After this, time will be set aside for local follow-up and dialogue meetings. The purpose of these dialogue meetings is to give employees and managers an opportunity to discuss the results and prioritise the initiatives which it makes sense to work on in the individual units.
It is managers who are responsible for ensuring that the results of the WPA are followed up – in collaboration with the occupational health and safety organisation and the liaison committee organisation.
Questions
If you have any questions about WPA 2025, you can contact your local occupational health and safety representative or a contact person for your occupational health and safety organisation by writing to apv@au.dk – see the occupational health and safety organisation at AU here.