Social and Psychological Safety
Social safety is fundamental for everyone working at, studying at, or visiting UT. Respect, integrity, honesty, and consideration for others are expected on our campus and within our organisation.
Facilitating a social safe environment - Tools & interventions
Creating a culture of social safety within your team is essential for fostering open communication, collaboration, and innovation. As a manager, initiating conversations about social safety can be challenging, but it's crucial for building trust and ensuring that every team member feels valued and heard.
Round table storytelling
The storytelling roundtable methodology aims to facilitate a safe space in which UT employees can share experiences about sensitive topics through stories. The methodology allows for new dialogue and listening skills to emerge for existing skills to be rediscovered. It helps to increase empathy for experiences of different people and takes into account power dynamics regarding which stories can and cannot be told in a team and by whom.
Type: (learn) sharing of experiences
Duration: 120 minutes
Participants: 4 – 6 participants
Requirements: Room for number of participants (preferably not online)
UT strategy game
A serious way to implement our UT Strategy is with the UT Strategy Game. It brings UT's core values to life in a playful and interactive way. You play the game with 6 to 9 people, from the same team. To end up with the most impact points, your strategic insight, entrepreneurship and team player skills will be called upon. UT strategy game is there for anyone who values team development and wants to further integrate Shaping2030 into everyday work.
Type: team development and team reflection
Duration: 120 minutes
Participants: 6 - 9 participants per game. There are max.5 games available.
Requirements: Room with a big table
Conversation Starters
Conversation Cards (invh.nl)
Delve into deeper layers of social safety within your team with conversation starters to encourage reflection, enabling your team to engage in profound dialogue. You can do this with your team by using Conversation Cards or One-Minute Mindlab experience (short videos). Designed for plenary sessions, the cards and videos are ideal as a structured kickstarter to create a safe and open environment to discuss social safety in your team. Each kickstarter is self-explanatory, so no guidance is necessary (but can be provided if desired).
Type: conversation starter and reflection
Duration: 60 minutes
Participants: team up to 10 participants
Requirements: live room
Are you interested in one of the possible follow-ups for your team?
Reach out to cdc-hr@utwente.nl.
Related Pages
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I)
The University of Twente aims to foster a diverse, open-minded and inspiring community, by building a strong inclusive culture at our university. We want to create common ground and shared responsibility.
To properly represent the various UT perspectives, the DE&I Advisory Board strives for members from all faculties and service departments. The board is led by a duo of chairpersons selected by the members of the DE&I Advisory Board.
Knowledge safety
As UT community, we have to make sure that we reduce or mitigate knowledge safety risks in order to keep our knowledge safe. Knowledge safety refers to a set of measures that we as UT community can take to ensure that we can cooperate with partners all over the world. These measures not only have an impact on education, research, and knowledge transfer, but also on international recruitment, the use of research infrastructure and also on IT services, such as access to accounts, ITC infrastructure, or the use of safety protocols.
Cybersafety & privacy are important topics at the university. They ensure that students and staff can work safely online, they help to keep research information secret and keep personal data protected.
Last edit: 13 January 2026
