Head of Department Letter April 2025

Work environment issues are often divided into the physical work environment, including safety, and the psychosocial work environment. The physical work environment is easier to regulate and monitor. You need to be trained to handle chemicals in a laboratory, we have regular safety rounds and if something happens (like at the nano lab recently), there are routines and procedures in place to limit the damage and solve the problem as quickly as possible.

The psychosocial work environment is often a bit more elusive and may be due to factors that have an inherent inertia, such as the local employee culture or personality conflicts. Nevertheless, we try to take the temperature of the institution's staff every two years in the OSA survey.

OSA stands for organisational and social work environment and is about how well the organisation is run and how we interact with each other in the organisation. These aspects are just as important for a good work environment as the physical work environment: a good physical work environment ensures that you don't get injured at work (very good!) but a good organisational and social work environment is what makes you want to go to work. It is also the case that research on work environment - for example in an article by researchers at the Karolinska Institute. The article shows that the psychosocial work environment has a direct impact on the performance of research teams. So, researching the psychosocial work environment is not just about the work environment but also about improving research performance. 

Universitetsläraren - Good working environment contributes to better research (in Swedish).

So what characterises a good organisational and social work environment? Typical factors highlighted are authentic leadership that is perceived as fair and a supportive social working climate characterised by trust and respect for colleagues and open communication. I think many of us recognise this type of environment as the idealised version of the university environment and I hope we can all contribute to maintaining such an environment in the Department of Physics.

If you don't feel that you are part of a good working environment, it is important that you raise the issue - we have many examples of things not getting better if you wait. In the first instance, it is your immediate manager you can turn to, but if for some reason it does not work, you are always welcome to talk to me, the safety representatives or union/scientific/doctoral representatives. 

The OSA survey is still open and I hope that as many of you as possible will give feedback on what we should work on next.

Else Lytken
Head of the Department of Physics