Where do we go from here?

In general terms, the staff at Aarhus University are happy in their work. That’s the first sentence in the summary of the most significant tendencies in the psychological workplace assessment for 2012, with eight out of ten staff saying that they are satisfied with their jobs virtually all the time. But the first psychological workplace assessment since the reorganisation of AU also shows that 17 per cent of the staff experience strong symptoms of stress. The university management takes the working environment problems seriously, and departmental liaison committees are now busy drawing up plans of action as part of the overall follow-up process after the assessment. While this work is going on, Omnibus would like to focus on some of the structural problems which many people have experienced in their everyday working lives since the reorganisation process: a sense of unclear management, difficulty in finding your feet in an administrative centre, and a feeling among managers that they are living in a bottleneck. Michael Christiansen, the chairman of the university board, discusses the scepticism expressed by the university’s researchers in the assessment. When faced with problems, what all these people share is an interest in supporting the development of Aarhus University.