The Danish Working Environment Authority dropped by

At regular intervals, the Danish Working Environment Authority comes by to check if our workplace follows the instructions in the Danish work environment legislation. I will get back to that shortly. 

In AGRO, we have a local work environment committee (LAMU) composed of elected staff representatives and appointed management representatives. Our task is to ensure that we uphold the rules and, not least, prevent work-related accidents and sickness. The workload in LAMU is to a great extent borne by dedicated work environment representatives from the field, laboratories and offices in Foulum and Flakkebjerg, and who have made themselves thoroughly familiar with the subject. They have 100 percent support from the management, which gives work environment high priority. If you are in doubt about who your work environment representative is, then check out LAMU’s website, where you can also find other information about the work environment organisation. 

So how did the visit in Foulum go? First of all, the Danish Working Environment Authority heard about how the department is organised with regard to localities, staff groups, and physical and psychological conditions. They were particularly interested in our management of the physical and psychological work environment for short-term employees, and were satisfied to hear about the well-being conversations that the PhD committee takes care of, and about the safety tours in the laboratories as well as the buddy scheme. All of these are good actions that certainly have a positive effect, but we need to be aware that they do not cover all employees with short-term contracts. 

In addition, the visitors wanted to hear about stress, especially within the senior group where we previously had challenges in both AGRO and AU as a whole. Here in AGRO we are not as systematic in our prevention regarding seniors as with our PhD students, but the Danish Working Environment Authority was positive with regard to our organisation of e.g. policy support in team structures. The Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2019 that was recently carried out will give us indications about the status regarding stress in the senior group but no matter what the results of the WPA show, it is a focus area. 

Thereafter, the Danish Working Environment Authority were on a tour of AGRO in Foulum. In general, the visitors were satisfied, but they also found a couple of things that we need to rectify, e.g. a Foulumgaard ladder that has now been retired. Tidying up was also an issue, including in the workshop, where you can stumble and fall if things are lying around, and in a few offices. The visitors pointed out that large amounts of paper gather dust which leads to indoor climate problems!