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