KTH views health and wellness as an important concern, because employees who are fit and well have more chance of being able to meet the demands placed upon them by their work. Your health is not just a personal matter, it is also a shared resource that is crucial to the organisation’s performance. As of 2019, KTH will be increasing its wellness promotion to SEK 3000 per calendar year and be giving staff the right to exercise during paid working hours by using a wellness hour.
All KTH employees are entitled to a wellness allowance that they canspend on activities that are approved by the Swedish Tax Agency as tax-free exercise. This includes gym visits, massages, golf, light therapy and swimming. To find out exactly what is included, a complete list can be viewed at the benefits portal KTH for me, where you can see how much of your wellness allowance is remaining.
Salary review
The salary review is now complete. This
means that the new salaries will be paid on 20 December. New salaries will be
paid retroactively from 1 October. All staff will be offered a meeting in the
New Year regarding their new salaries, if they so wish.
All of us here at the school’s office would like to wish all staff a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Docent is a title, which enables a person to act as a main supervisor for a PhD student. It should be noted that it is only a title and it does not influence the employment of a person. Thus, this enables external people to apply for becoming a Docent. This is a good way for us at ITM and KTH to build strong collaborations with, for example, institutes. We already know that we have many external PhD students today and for example at institutes. If we build up an improved supervision knowledge at the institute the external PhD student can get an improved supervision on the site where they are active, as a complement to the supervision from the KTH supervisor.
The procedure for becoming a Docent has changed from January 1, 2018. Similar to before, the scientific qualifications are judged by an external expert. Thereafter, the Docent Committee’s task is to judge the pedagogical aspects of the person. The committee consists of a chair person, two teacher representatives and one student representative. The latter is selected by the KTH student organization THS, but is most commonly the elective student representative for each doctoral program. Finally, if the Docent title is granted a diploma is presented at a seminar where the candidate gives a lecture.
Currently, we have a dozen of Docent applications that are in progress at ITM. If you wish to learn more about a Docent seminar you have a chance on February 14 at 14.00. Lei Feng will give his Docent lecture and receive his Docent diploma in room B242 at Brinellvägen 83.
I also wish to inform you that Professor Natalia Skorodumova has become a new member of the ITM team this year. She will be the vice chairperson in the recruitment committee for hiring of faculty as well as for the Docent committee.
Finally, I wish to say that it is nice that the days are getting longer week by week. For me the need for day light seems to increase in importance as the year goes by. Is this a sign of that I am getting old or simply a craving for the D vitamin from the sun?
With the “metoo movement”, there should no longer be any doubts that sexual harassment occurs in all types of organisation and that there is an organisational issue.
At KTH, a case management system is currently under development. KTH intends to implement a major knowledge enhancement initiative on sexual harassment as part of its gender integration effort.
Education
The examination period is coming to an end for period 1. Exams have been held, exam papers scanned, and grade registration in LADOK is underway. We are now preparing for the re-examination period in December and exam period 2 at the beginning of January.
Financial news
The school is bringing in an additional resource in connection with EU accounting. It is mainly within the EU that external funds are increasing, and this requires specific skills and experience to maintain quality in the accounting area.
Plan Edit
The school has acquired a planning tool for all the organisation’s resources, teachers, classes, subjects, groups, etc. This will give us an opportunity to obtain an overview of planned and used resources. The purpose is mainly to be able to use this in a work environment perspective. What does our employees’ work situation really look like?
Plan Edit allows real-time monitoring of scheduled resources, which gives a comprehensive overview of budgeted and used resources. The school has decided to test-run Plan Edit for 2018/19. The school will then conduct a follow-up/analysis.
The KTH Schools are rather different in size and also in balance between education and research. It might also be that some schools could benefit from more integration between subject areas. With this as a background, our rector Sigbritt Karlsson, took yesterday some important decisions about the future organisation of KTH. The dean of the BIO School will coordinate an investigation towards integration of the three schools BIO, CHE and STH. Similarly, the dean of the ICT School will coordinate an investigation towards integration of the three schools ICT, CSC and EES. The dean of the ECE School will investigate/propose how the ECE School should be organized in the future.
The three Schools ITM, SCI and ABE will not be directly affected, a fact which should be interpreted such that these schools are of reasonable size and with a good balance between education and research. The time plan is such that a new KTH organization should be effective from January 1, 2018, which also means that the period of mandate for the current school deans, vice deans and strategic councils are extended to December 31, 2017. In line with making the KTH schools more similar in size and structure, and with focusing on quality, the rector has also decided to investigate and propose new role descriptions for the posts as GA, FA and PA. For more information about the organisation changes please refer to:
The last part of the year places big pressure on the Dean’s Office (DO) Administration often deals with aiming for the finish – the cycle must be completed before the end of the year.
In the best case scenario, the salary reviews will be complete. The financial books will close and the 2016 budget will be entered into the system. Activity reports will be finalised. All grading reports for the year will be submitted, partly so as students will have their grades registered during the correct period, but also because registration is a financial transaction.
Furthermore, it is the case that all of us want to “tidy up” a little bit before the new year. This is usually evident from the marked increase in expenses, remunerations a travel invoices throughout December.
In the spring, KTH received its environmental certification. Revisions will be conducted on an ongoing basis to make sure that we continue with our improvement work and follow the established management plans for meeting the environmental goals in place. An internal audit was carried out in November, in which ITM performed well – we only had a few small deviations that will now be rectified.
The time frame for this year’s salary reviews has been tight. Many of us have worked to pull off the “impossible” feat of having the new salaries paid out in December. It is fun being able to say that good cooperation and communication within the school and between the parties made sure that ITM was finished on time. In the best case scenario – if all of KTH has done well – payments will be made on 23 December.
We have recently seen the arrival of a new colleague, Anton Lagerbäck. Anton will mainly be working with academic appointments. There has been a huge need for support in this area. The process and working methods at KTH have been altered, which has meant a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing for completion. It is now the ambition that, with the help of Anton, we can get the ball rolling without disruptions and with shortened processing times. So a very warm welcome to Anton!
Throughout the year we have worked on creating routines for how to manage the School’s purchases of between SEK 100,000 and 500,000. The routines must follow those set by the state but also the KTH guidelines at the same time as we need smooth processing for everyone involved. But most of all we should be able to be happy with the product/service we buy, despite the bureaucracy that it entails.
Now we are heading towards the end of the year and with this, the financial books for 2015 will close. This time of year is the most intensive for our financial team. Whilst the rest of us go on Christmas vacation, the pressure is on in the “workshop”, with all systems go for finalising the year. Nevertheless, over recent years, this work has gone ahead without a hitch. Currently, our accounts maintain a high standard, which means that comprehensive work must be done, but it is managed without any surprises.
For many years there have been requests and demands from the organisation and the School’s financial team to create a project leader report – and now we’re there! Over the first quarter, each person responsible for a project will receive follow up reports each month, directly to their email. To be able to carry out this follow up, a budget is of course needed for the respective project. All new projects have one of these, as do the majority of older projects. It will be interesting to receive feedback on these reports from those of you who are project leaders.
Work to create the School’s Annual Report for 2015 is in full swing. It will be the seventh year in a row in which the School issues a report. This years’ report focuses upon “Impact –research’s cooperation/influence in society”.
During 2015, DO’s focus areas have been:
* Environmental certification
* Working environment measures
* Management course (returns on 16th March)
* Fine-tuned accounting with monthly follow ups
* Project leader reports (financial)
* Purchasing and procurement routines
* Information online, e.g., “information from management”
* Health and wellbeing initiatives
* Stress project (seminar for all the heads of school and lecture for all members of staff)
A big thank you to all of my colleagues for this past year! I am proud to be the Head of Administration at ITM and I am grateful to have you all as my colleagues. You always do your best, no matter what!
From everyone at DO, merry Christmas and a happy new year!
