The Works Council wants to conduct a survey to find out the favourite work environment of university employees. As soon as the results are known, the Works Councils plans to hold talks with the Executive Board. ‘We hope that the survey will play a role in the design of future buildings.’

‘By means of a short survey, the Works Council invites you to react to the proposed plans of Radboud University for the design of office and educational spaces as outlined in the Campus Plan.’ That is how a mail sent by the Works Council to all employees yesterday starts out.

Square metres

The Campus Plan, presented last spring, contains the Executive Board’s vision on what the campus should look like in 2030. According to the plan, personal workstations will, for example, turn into ‘a work environment with shared workstations and facilities’. In the future, workstations are no longer exclusive to one employee, but need to be shared. As a result, the number of square metres of office space will decrease.

Members of the Works Council want to use their survey to gauge to what degree employees agree with these plans. ‘It took some time before we were able to send out the survey, but as the Works Council, it is important that we can consult our constituency’, says council member Peter van der Heiden, who created the survey together with Arnoud Lagendijk.

Constituency

Just like other members of the Works Council, Van der Heiden was surprised by the contents of the Campus Plan. ‘The website of Campus & Facilities suggests that we as the Works Council agreed with the plan, but that definitely did not happen with this section. We have been critical of activity-based working (sharing workstations, ed.) from the get-go. That is because we do not think this is the employees’ decision. This was also revealed when a group of employees at humanities started a petition: they collected 400 signatures in favour of keeping fixed workstations.’

Van der Heiden does not dare to say how many respondents the council is hoping for. He is more concerned with employees who wish for this, to be able to fill in the survey. The Works Council wants to use the results to engage in dialogue with the Executive Board. ‘We hope that the survey will play a role in the design of future buildings. The outcomes will shape the attitude of the Works Council.’

At the same time, Van der Heiden indicates wanting to be realistic. ‘Not all employees might be able to keep their own office in the future. Since covid, many people work from home, so a lot of offices are vacant from time to time. We should also think about sustainability and efficiency.’

Next move

First, the Works Council wants to wait out the results of the survey, which will remain open until the week before Christmas. Regardless of the outcome, Van der Heiden hopes that the Executive Board will at least listen to employees’ needs this time.

‘If not, we will consider our next move’, he says. ‘The Works Council has a right of consent, and I can’t imagine us consenting if the board goes against the wishes of the employees. The council also consists of several union representatives, I imagine they will then consider taking action.’