looking for ways to improve your mental and PHYSICAL WELL-BEING at ut? on this page you find everything related to employee well-being
In addition to the information on this page, stay tuned to the Service portal news page for up-to-date offers focused on well-being. To make sure that you do not miss any news and events on this topic, subscribe to the subject 'Health & Well-being' in your Service Portal settings.
Are you a student?
On utwente.nl/student-wellbeing we give you some practical tips and advice and offer help when you are feeling down and stressed.
Well-being support at UT
Maintaining a healthy work/life balance is important for your mental and physical well-being. At UT, we offer various ways to support your well-being. This ranges from providing instructions on how to set up your healthy (home) workplace, to support in combining work with informal caregiving, a financial helpdesk and tools for capacity planning.
Healthy (home) workplace for UT employees Having a healthy (home) workplace is of great importance in order to be able to work as sustainably as possible. It therefore is important that your home workplace meets a number of conditions. On the home workplace page you will find more information about the possibilities for ordering home workplace supplies and ICT workplace support.
But working from home is more than just setting up the right facilities and having the right working-position. Make sure you stay productive and motivated by taking regular breaks, drawing up a fixed timetable and checking off your to-do-list. Finding it hard to take a short break in-between? See if a meeting can be held in 50 minutes instead of an hour. Or go on a lunch walk to activate your brain.
The UT Sports Centre offers a diverse range of services that you can make use of as UT employee to improve your physcial and mental well-being. Go to Sports for Employees to find more information on how to activate your (free) CampusCard and what sports and activities you can do.
Next to that, you can also participate in morning meditations. There is no registration needed to participate.
Health care facilties on Campus On the campus of University of Twente you will find a wide range of healthcare institutions to offer in addition to the mentioned contacts below. As a UT employee, you can very easily book an appointment. The specialists are very experienced in complaints common for students, international knowledge workers, and highly skilled professionals. The facilities include a General practitioner, Dentist, Travel doctor, Psychotherapy, Physiotherapist, Dietician, Company doctor and health & safety service.
Twice a year, you can participate in the UT Well-being Weeks, a dedicated multiple-week period focusing on the well-being of both our employees and students. Throughout this time, you can participate in a variety of activities and initiatives. Visit the Well-being Weeks website for more information.
Do you want to stay updated and receive the latest news on the Well-being Weeks. Subscribe to the Well-being Weeks newsletter.
Lifestyle Check for employees Do you want to have a look at your lifestyle? Set your own goals and work on specific aspects of your lifestyle that matter to you! A lifestyle check is free of charge for UT employees (people who are employed by UT) .
During the lifestyle check, potential health risks can be identified early on. You will do this together with a lifestyle coach. The check (60 minutes) takes place in the Sports Centre and includes a physical examination with various measurements, including blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol. Additionally, you will fill out 2 questionnaires before your appointment, which combined with the results of the physical examination, form the basis for conversation with the lifestyle coach. If necessary, follow-up interventions can be planned, and it is possible to be guided by a lifestyle coach throughout the year.
Sleeping Pod in the Vrijhof As a UT employee, you can make use of the sleeping pod in the Vrijhof to revitalise your workday. Do you need a 20-minute break from your busy day? Go to the Vrijhof - UT library and revitalise your workday! You can find the sleeping pod in the downstairs study area of the Vrijhof library. The sleeping pod is available during library opening hours.
*currently it is not possible to book the sleeping pod and you can make use of it without reservation.
Sometimes, personal circumstances may lead you to seek additional information or specific support to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
Combining work and informal caregiving Are you providing long-term and unpaid care for a chronically ill, disabled, or needy person within your environment? This can be a family member, but it does not have to be. Becoming a informal caregiver is usually not a choice and can happen to anyone, at any age. Sometimes the caring responsibilities are difficult to combine with a job. Then overload or failure is lurking.
UT wants to prevent this by paying attention to employees with informal care tasks, being flexible and offering tailor-made solutions, so that the work/life balance is not disturbed or disturbed as little as possible.
Talk about being an informal caregiver Are you an informal caregiver and do you notice that your work/life balance is disturbed? Don’t keep struggling, but start a conversation with your manager and try to come to a solution together. Often there are more possibilities that you might think at first.
What arrangements are there at UT for informal caregivers? Within UT there are various arrangements that you can make use of:
- Emergency leave in acute situations (ranging from a few hours to a few days) at full pay.
- Short-term care leave: a maximum of 2 times the working hours per week per 12 months at 70% of the salary.
- Long-term care leave: maximum of 6 times the working hours per week per 12 months. In principle without pay, unless otherwise agreed.
Sometimes the above-mentioned arrangements, that are already in place, are not enough and a tailor-made solution can be helpful. For example:
- Flexible working (other days/times, from home, etc.)
- Other long-term leave. Takes effect after a written agreement on duration, remuneration, payment of pension contributions (in case of decreased salary) and taking compensation and leave hours.
- Temporary other work.
- Temporary reduction in working hours.
Do you want to suggest a different solution? Discuss this with your manager or HR advisor.
Do you have a question about informal caregiving and working at UT? You can always reach out to: wellbeing-hr@utwente.nl
Anonymous financial helpdesk There is an external Helpdesk available for you that you can call anonymously with financial questions or concerns. For this, UT has a partnership with DiFfit. DiFfit helps with a listening ear, advice and useful tips.
In embracing physical diversity, we also recognize neurodiversity as the variations in cognitive and emotional processes among individuals. This encompasses people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodiverse traits.
Neurodiversity brings forth a valuable array of perspectives and talents. It serves as a source of creativity, innovation, and unique processes of thought within teams and the broader organisation. However, neurodiversity can, for instance, lead to tensions or feelings of misunderstanding, potentially causing challenges for employees or teams.
If you have questions about neurodiversity and work or if you are seeking support for yourself, your team, or other colleagues, please reach out to wellbeing-hr@utwente.nl.
Capacity Management
It is extremely important for both your mental and physical health to manage your workload. Avoid stress symptoms and improve your work/life balance by keeping track of capacity management. Do you work more hours than is required regularly? Do you spend too much time attending meetings and doing administrative work? Which leads to having too little time for research, personal contacts, and development? It can be difficult to start a conversation with your manager about this issue. To address such situations, a tool has been developed to help you gain insight into your tasks and the time that you have.
More insight with this tool More insight with this tool
A study into employee well-being shows that 50% of employees structurally work overtime. This study also shows that many UT employees are not satisfied with the current discussion* on the topic of workload. It is time to make a change. Employee well-being is important to UT, so we are committed to making workload something that can be discussed and managed.
*Tip: a training to help initiate the conversation and speak out!
This is why HR, along with researchers, lecturers, and support staff, is developing a tool that will make tasks and time distribution transparent – and therefore something that can be discussed easily. The tool contains information that has already been filled in, in order to make things as easy as possible for you. You will see instantly in which quarter your workload is high and which activities cause this. The information that has been filled in automatically can be adjusted manually, thus producing a realistic picture of your workload, both for your current situation and for the next four quarters.
Of course, the tool does not automatically lead to a reduction of your workload. The insights that you gain with it can offer the starting point to initiate a conversation about the topic with your manager. The insights, facts and prediction of future workload facilitate looking at the situation objectively and finding a solution together.
Employee time planning dashboard
Well-being Action Plan 2023-2025
This well-being action plan focuses on where we are now, and at what steps we will take in the period 2023-2025 in relation to our wellbeing. We are committed to the well-being of all our people, and invest at the level of the individual, the team and the organisation.
UT employee well-being study
As the current circumstances are unique and we cannot yet predict how things will be in a year, every year all employees are invited to participate in the Well-being Survey. UT wants to know how employees perceive their well-being. To be able to act in a timely and data-driven manner, we want to have continuous, up-to-date, specific, and reliable insight into topics related to the well-being of employees. The results of this research will inform local well-being action plans and the themes of the upcoming Well-being Weeks. We also invite all teams to work with the results themselves. Faculties and Service Departments will receive feedback with unit-specific results.
The most recent Well-being Report can be found here:
Previous reports are available below.
Well-being and safety contacts
- Your supervisor, HR advisors and HSE contacts
You can always talk to your supervisor and your HR-department for advice, to discuss options or to keep them updated on your personal situation. For questions related to your workplace-setup you can contact your HSE advisor. - Confidential Advisors
There are four confidential advisors within our university. They can advise and support you if you are confronted with undesirable behaviour such as aggression, discrimination, violence, (sexual) harassment, bullying or stalking. - Occupational Health and Safety Service
The UT has an occupational health services team to help with occupational health guidance. This team includes, among others, occupational health doctors and psychologists (via occupational health doctor). All contacts and details can be found here. - PhD councelling and support
TGS offers various types of support during your PhD trajectory. This assistance is available to all PhD candidates, regardless whether you are UT-employed, external or a scholarship holder. - Support and After Care
Were a victim of or a witness to aggressive physical, verbal or psychological behaviour (including bullying) in the workplace or study place? It’s always best to talk to a professional soon after the incident occurs. - Integrity guide: find the right person to get in touch with
You can always reach out to integrity@utwente.nl
Additionally, these guides make it easy to find the right person to get in touch if you have any questions regarding integrity matters. - Reach out to UT Team Well-being
Do you have questions, concerns, or ideas on improving well-being at the UT? Reach out to us at wellbeing-hr@utwente.nl. Contact persons for this mailbox are Ines Brüninghoff (HR) and Carmen Landstra (HR).
Related links
Tools for team-leaders
All information on this page is relevant, regardless of your function.But as managers you also have a signaling and helping role towards your team. That is why there is tooling that is specifically aimed at managers.
In case you are looking for a training, course or team-development related to well-being, you can find it under Development Offers on this page. To support your team members (and yourself) you can make use of the sports and cultural offer, the relevant information about setting up the (home) workplace, and make sure you know where to find the suitable contact persons (including the integrity support structure). It is important to know what trends and signals there are in your unit from the well-being research. Below you will find a checklist to recognize symptoms and more.
Under 'related links' at the bottom of this page you will find other health & safety topics.
Tools and information exclusively aimed at team leaders and managerial functions, including topics outside well-being, can be found on the 'for managers' portal page. An example of a page that can be found here is manager-specific information related to absence and absence prevention.
Contact
Please contact HR Services for any further questions. Tel 053 489 8011.
For ideas, comments or changes to this page, please email webteam-hr@utwente.nl
Last edit: 10 January 2023