AGRO is a good place to work
We have reason to be proud and happy: AGRO achieves a good score in the latest psychological workplace assessment – but we need to focus on the areas where there is room for improvement.
The results from the latest psychological workplace assessment at Aarhus University are now available. It is a comprehensive piece of work: 1,100 pages of figures and analysis, based on responses from 5,764 people, or a return rate of 75 percent.
You can read the reports here. The reports cover all of Aarhus University, with results divided into faculties, departments and sections.
Get an overview of the psychological working environment in AGRO
You can gain a lot of information from digging deep into the figures, but this can also be a tad confusing. To get an overall picture of how the Department of Agroecology has done, you can instead cast your eyes over the presentation giving a summary of our figures here.
The figures here are grouped under the headings Well-being, Relation to work, Relations to colleagues, Management experienced on a daily basis, Workload, stress and loneliness as well as Bullying and harassment in concise and clear tables. The tables also show comparisons with ST, AU and with the results from the previous survey of the psychological working environment that was carried out in 2012.
High response rate
We have reason to be pleased with our results – both compared with the previous result and with "the others" at AU and ST. The return rate for AGRO was 83 percent (203 respondents), which is above the ST average of 77 percent.
- I am pleased that we have had a good response rate and would like to thank the employees for taking the time in a busy working day to answer the questionnaire. It is important to have a strong dataset so that we can make use of the figures, says head of department Erik Steen Kristensen. He is also pleased with the actual results of the evaluation.
- We have seen progress on almost all fronts compared with the previous survey. For the "Well-being" aspect, I am especially pleased to see an increase of 15 percentage points in employee satisfaction with their work prospects (67 percent), and there is corresponding progress in the number of employees who would recommend their workplace to others (76 percent), he says and continues:
- For "Relation to work", 92 percent of us are now satisfied with the influence we have on our work, and for "Relation to colleagues" I welcome a further increase of 15 percentage points in the proportion of employees who feel recognized for their good work (63 percent). However, we must work diligently to get an even higher score here.
Satisfaction with management
Erik is also happy with the employees' experience of their managers.
- The figures are mostly good compared with AU, ST and the previous survey, but the score has dropped on the point on whether management is good at helping to prioritise tasks. Whether this is an indication that people are able and willing to do the prioritising themselves or whether it reflects a need for help to prioritise, I don’t know, but we will have to find out, he says.
When it comes to workload, stress and loneliness, there has been a handsome improvement for AGRO in these areas, too, but there is still room for improvement.
- We have worked diligently with these issues, and this is reflected in the numbers, but 8 percent nevertheless still feel that their work gives them strong symptoms of stress, and 16 percent feel exhausted. Nor am I satisfied that 9 percent feel lonely in their workplace. This is too many, and we will look more closely at this so that we can understand and improve conditions.
The final table gives an overview of the experience of bullying and harassment. Here the numbers are fortunately vanishingly low – but not low enough.
- At Aarhus University there is zero tolerance to bullying and harassment, so no-one should experience these things, says Erik.
The next steps look at causes
With these figures we measure the temperature but do not give a diagnosis. We need to dig deeper for that, and that will be the next step.
On 26 May there will be a joint meeting of the local liaison committee (LSU) / departmental forum and local work environment committee (LAMU) to discuss how AGRO can improve its results.
- I encourage all employees to look at the figures carefully and to send in any comments and suggestions to LSU, LAMU, their leader or to me, says Erik Steen Kristensen.