Blog entries

Remember to participate in the WPA

While we wait for the national elections to the Danish Parliament, there’s another important arena where you as employees can make your voice count. Once again, it is time for a workplace assessment (WPA).

A good work environment is important both for the individual employee and for the university. It is important for our ability to perform our work, and for our ability to achieve good results together here at AU.

The WPA plays an important role in the preservation and development of a good work environment at Aarhus University – including the administration. The WPA is important because it can contribute to revealing challenges in relation to the work environment that managers and employees need to work together to develop and improve. And conversely, it can reveal what aspects of the work environment at AU are functioning well.

For these reasons, I would like to encourage you to take the questionnaire that has been sent out.

You may think: ‘What is the point of a WPA? My voice won’t be heard anyway in an organisation as big as AU.’ I cannot guarantee that we can take steps to improve all of the conditions that are covered in a WPA. On the other hand, I can guarantee that managers take the input we get from the survey extremely seriously.

I believe that following up on the WPA should to take place as locally as possible. I myself do not have the solutions to how the work environment can be improved in the various units. In this area, the managers have overall responsibility for acting on the input from the WPA. I would also like to stress that to a high degree, I understand the development of the work environment as a collaboration and a dialogue between employees and management. This is how I believe that we can create the best work environment.

So once again: I urge you to take the WPA survey. The more employees who answer, the better basis we will have for a good dialogue and local follow-up.

And finally, I would also like to encourage everyone to participate in the dialogue meetings that will take place after the WPA survey. The purpose of these meetings is to give employees and managers an opportunity to discuss the results and together prioritise the initiatives it makes sense to work on. We all have a responsibility for the work environment at AU.

Read more about the WPA here