Quantitative observations – summary
- 343 people completed the poll, more scientific staff (215 people / 64%) than support staff (119 people / 36%) and more women (226) than men (95) or other identity (19)
- Total response rate of 33.8%
- Appreciation rating regarding social safety within their own team/group: 7% of the group of respondents scores between 1 and 5 on a scale from 1 (very unsafe) to 10 (very safe). Within this, the percentage for support staff is slightly higher than scientific staff.
- Appreciation rating regarding social safety within FSW as a whole: 7% of the group of respondents also scores between 1 and 5 on a scale of 1 (very unsafe) to 10 (very safe). Within that, that percentage is equal support to scientific staff.
- Rating regarding social safety within the physical or digital working environment: 4% (physical) and 5% (digital) of the group of respondents score between 1 and 5 on a scale from 1 (very unsafe) to 10 (very safe). In both cases the % for support staff is higher than scientific staff.
- The summary average of all questions is between 7.72 and 8.49, 'other identity' scores significantly lower and support staff scores lower than scientific staff with regard to the assessment of one's own social safety
- 7% (= 24) of the respondents score social safety within their own department/group/team on 1 to 5;
- More support staff respondents (10%), score social safety within their own department/group/team on 1 to 5 versus scientific staff (4%).
The faculty board is happy with the high percentage of respondents that feel safe within the faculty. We are at the same time concerned about the 7% that doesn’t feel safe. We will carefully assess their situation and what needs to be done.
If you would like to view the full tabular report, it can be requested from the programmesocialsafetyfsw [at] ru.nl (project team).
How do we act upon this?
- The role of the faculty board: the faculty board finds social safety of great importance and tries to deal with cases as best as possible. The board recognises that it is difficult to keep the right balance and is open to feedback. The faculty board has set up a critical response and looks back on case studies in an evaluative manner in order to learn;
- The role of managers: intervision will be organised for managers in early 2024 and an advisor focused on social safety is available to provide tailormade support to teams and to pay extra attention to awareness and prevention. Social safety is also an important theme in annual reviews;
- Transparency and communication: a lot of attention is paid to transparancy during current cases, but all kinds of elements make full transparency complex and sometimes impossible. Due to privacy legislation and employment law for instance. But we will provide more insight into the process steps that are followed in a case and the influencing factors, so that there is more insight and understanding of what happens 'behind the scenes' after a report. Attention will be paid to this during, among other things, Social Safety Week (March 4).
- Making speaking up easier: in the university-wide plan for social safety, one of the key points is to make speaking up easier and more accessible. This will be continued in the coming months;
- Comments on the gender-neutral toilets and social safety signs: even before the poll, there were comments about the toilets and adjustments are being considered to the amount of gender-neutral toilets and to the signs. This will be followed up by the end of Q1 at the latest by means of a short survey.
- Eight people described situations in the open questions in which they or a close colleague found themselves in a socially unsafe situation. Because the poll is anonymous, we cannot reach out to these people. If you would like to get in touch regarding this poll or any other situation, please report to vertrouwenspersonen [at] ru.nl (vertrouwenspersonen[at]ru[dot]nl).
Lastly: we will repeat the poll on a later date. A survey in this form cannot be seen as a baseline measurement and is not suitable for measuring the development of the feeling of social security. But it does provide meaningful insights for the faculty board and for the project team to translate into the social safety programme.
