WPA 2025 is complete – thank you for taking part
The results of this year’s WPA were published on Monday. At Tech, the survey revealed that levels of employee satisfaction and engagement have increased and that staff find their work meaningful. But we still need to focus on fostering a good workplace culture and achieving a healthy task-time balance.
Every three years, AU measures how staff feel about their physical and psychological work environment by conducting a workplace assessment (WPA) across the entire university. This year, 1,626 employees at Tech completed the survey, which is a response rate of 82 per cent.
“We achieved a high response rate, which shows that staff at the faculty are committed to ensuring that Tech is a good place to work. Fostering a good work environment requires a sustained effort from all parts of the faculty, and the results of the WPA give us a solid foundation for our ongoing work,” says Dean Eskild Holm Nielsen.
Overall, WPA 2025 showed a solid result for Aarhus University, with progress on several key parameters compared with the previous workplace assessment in 2022. This is according to Morten Dam Rasmussen, who is the occupational health and safety manager at Tech:
“We see the same picture at Tech, where levels of employee satisfaction and engagement have increased since the last WPA. More employees would now recommend AU as a workplace, and Tech received high scores on questions relating to the meaningfulness of our work, tolerance, respectful communication, and the availability of our day-to-day management,” he says.
The WPA has also revealed, however, that there are areas regarding workload and stress that we must continue to focus on at Tech:
“At Tech, 25 per cent of employees feel there is an imbalance between their tasks and the time available to perform them. 22 per cent of employees also say they have experienced symptoms of stress, with senior members of academic staff and PhD students most affected,” says Morten Dam Rasmussen.
Like the university as a whole, Tech has also seen an increase in the share of people who have been subjected to inappropriate behaviour.
“191 people said they have been spoken to in an abusive, offensive or condescending way in the past 12 months. This is completely unacceptable, and we must take a clear stand against it. Many people discuss these incidents with their colleagues, and if they become a pattern, it’s important that managers are made aware so that the problem can be addressed. At Tech, we are committed to having an open conversation about inappropriate behaviour,” says Morten Dam Rasmussen.
Eskild Holm Nielsen agrees:
“Nobody should be subjected to abusive or condescending language, or sexism, in the workplace. That’s an essential part of ensuring a safe and respectful work environment,” he says.
All departments and centres are now continuing working with their responses regarding both the physical and psychological work environment. This work culminates in the creation of action plans to maintain the things we do well and improve the places where we face challenges.