The dean has taken the decision that the school must establish a service centre at ITM. The work for this change has now started. The school will have three service desks: Södertälje, Sing Sing and the IM headquarters. The desks must be manned during office hours, Monday – Friday. The organisation must be in operation from April 1, 2017. Annika Lilja at DO will be the project manager until the service centre is in operation.

A first step in this work has been to talk to all administrators who, in one way or the other, will be affected by this change. Step two is that we, together within the administration, will hold a workshop on November 23-24 to get the opportunity to discuss the change but to also have a chance to influence the process as work will be done on project basis until April 1.

We will, as the project progresses, actively inform all the employees at the ITM school. A control group and a reference group are appointed. The reference group includes employees from the academic line and the school’s main safety representative.

In parallel with the manned service desks, there will be a digital input terminal for issues related to public service. Hopefully, that means a switch to digitalization for base-service issues;

• Easier for the customer
• More efficient
• A driving force on the matter
• Enhanced service level
• Availability
• Extended opening hours
• Cost-effective in the long run
• Broader and deeper skills
• Shared working

We must together find the key for adapting to the demands of service. One challenge is to find a structure for the proper flow of information so that we can constantly adjust the level of service according to the demand.

/ Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration

The Office of Student Affairs has moved to Lindstedtsvägen 3, 6 tr. We have now made a joint decision to extend the office’s service and availability towards students pursuing programmes at the school.

As from December 1st a service desk will be in operation, Monday-Thursday from 09:00-13:00. A telephone service is also being introduced to the service desk during the same opening hours. The aim is that the desk will provide students with a quick and easy way of finding answers to questions relating to their studies. Students can also come here for assistance in booking an appointment for study counselling or international coordinators for more complicated issues.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the office will have drop-in times from 09:00-11:30.

To minimise visits, emails and phone calls about “simple questions”, a project is being launched that will review the information flow on the school’s website and on the two monitors that will be installed by the entrance to the office as well as the service desk.

With regard to emails, the aim is that these will be answered within 48 hours. All phone calls must have active call forwarding when a person is not present or is unable to answer.

We hope that this will enhance the service level as well as availability towards students at the school, and also within the organisation!

Salary review 2016

Work is under way on this year’s salary review, and most salary discussions have been completed. The aim is that new salaries will be paid on December 23rd, backdated to October 1st, which is the review date. The ITM intranet has information for all parties together with guidelines on setting salaries at ITM.

The agreements concluded so far this year in the Swedish labour market have been at a level of 2.2% with a contract period of 12 months. In view of this, and with due consideration of KTH’s financial situation, at present this is the guideline to which we must adhere in the 2016 salary review at KTH.

No special measures have been invoked in this year’s review, but good teaching performance shall be acknowledged.

We hope that we will also be able to keep to the schedule in this year’s review.

/ Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration

The school has closed its books at SEK -4.2m for the period January-April 2016. The budget for the whole year is SEK +3.6m. The discrepancy between budget and the result is primarily due to salary costs and external revenue.

Revenue (SEK, millions)

Costs (SEK, millions)

Yours sincerely,

Christina, Head of Administration

Open Days at KTH Royal Institute of Technology

This is an opportunity for prospective students to get answers to all their questions about KTH and to meet students, lecturers and study advisers for undergraduate programmes. KTH will be providing drop-in study advice, walking tours of the campus and seminars. There will be active participation from study advisers at ITM (School of Industrial Engineering and Management).

KTH Campus, 3rd April 12.00pm-4.00pm and 4th April 2.00pm-6.00pm, at 3-5 Lindstedtsvägen Street and 4 Drottning Kristinas Väg Street. Open Day at KTH Södertälje is on 6th April.

ITM Office of Student Affairs

During the spring term, the Office of Student Affairs has been understaffed for a variety of reasons including leave and sickness absence. We have now arranged for temporary support to help stabilise the situation while we wait for our colleagues to return full-time.

I’d like to thank all my colleagues who have had to carry a heavy burden during the first few months of the year and whose input has been over and above what would normally have been expected.

Working in an open environment where we see students on a daily basis means that we see some students who are in a very distressed state. As we sometimes find ourselves in threatening situations, we have started reviewing security in the Office. In really volatile situations we have occasionally introduced security guards.

We must of course continue to have an open door, since the whole point of our existence is to provide services and guidance to students and lecturers.

However, we will be reviewing our working environment and ensuring that we make it as safe as we possibly can.

Regards,

Christina, Head of Administration

It will soon be time for a new ”MUS” employee survey. “MUS” can be seen as a temperature gauge that tells us about the general atmosphere at the workplace and how we balance our jobs with our leisure time.

To get the best possible picture it is important that as many people as possible answer the questionnaire. This will allow us to constructively allocate the resources where we need them the most. We are well aware of the importance of processing the information generated by the survey and it is management’s intention to do just that.

Below we have prepared a list of activities that have been conducted since the last survey. Naturally we hope that they have had a beneficial effect on everyone.

1. To reduce the negative stress linked to work and to alleviate sleep difficulties caused by the prevailing situation at work we have arranged:

• obligatory stress management seminars for all managers
• lectures on the theme of stress for employees ”motivation till motion” (“motivation for exercise”). ”Lär dig hantera din stress” (“Learn to manage your stress”) and “Balans i Livet” (“A balanced life”).

2. To improve the general level of health we have:

• coordinated ITM’s preventative fitness activities
• Step competition

3. To increase the number of staff who are familiar with the emergency routines, we have:

• prepared contingency plans and informed the employees about them

4. To increase the number of staff who are familiar with the fire evacuation routines we have had:

• regular fire drills in all premises
• training of fire drill leaders and fire protection officers
• fire safety training for lab work

5. To increase the number of staff who are familiar with the routines after accidents/work injuries and routines for reporting irregularities regarding harassment and discrimination, we have:

• developed tools for simpler reporting, we now keep statistics of accidents/ occupational injuries
• provided information about the routines in the event of occupational injury, accidents, discrimination/harassment in all management groups, school/department
• informed employees about the routines for handling occupational injury, accidents, discrimination/harassment

6. To combat discrimination, the school has taken preventative action by:

• arranging an event that focuses on equal treatment and diversity
• played ”Mr. Norm” in different teams
• raised equality issues on the management course

7. To improve the indoor climate and therefore the physical work environment we have:

• worked alongside Akademiska Hus in improving the indoor climate

8. To improve the ergonomics in the workplace and therefore the physical work environment we have:

• hired an ergonomist who has provided information about general issues linked to ergonomics
• offered a personal ergonomics round for those who request one
• purchased ergonomic products where the need exists

9. To improve the supervision of our doctoral students:

• MMK has created a supervisor’s forum
• MSE has held regular meetings with its doctoral students
• ITM has set up routines for following up the syllabus

10. To improve the quality of performance review:

• TMT has had workplace meetings and discussed and provided information about the development dialogues

11. To improve leadership we have conducted:

• a full-day management training course focusing on work environment, stress, conflict management etc.
• coaching-programme for all managers in administration including group development
• needs-based group-development
• yearly leadership conference for all managers

We sincerely hope that some of the activities listed above have helped to improve the workplace but we also that we have learned to balance work and leisure in a way that will generate a noticeable improvement in the survey compared with the last one.

ITM’s management requests that you allocate time to answer the questionnaire when it arrives in your e-mail. This will enable us to influence and improve our shared work environment together.

Thank you in advance

Christina, Head of Administration