EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

Chapter 1 ! Personnel development and organisational culture 59
be changed. The English-speaking staff especially stated that there should be more
information in English. Someone said language lessons should be obligatory.
! On the 1/3-2/3 gender distribution on boards and committees: six persons considered
this to be a bad measure. Only one person thought the distribution should
be 1/2-1/2. All reactions came from male academic staff.
! Remarks about LGB: three respondents mentioned the ‘invisibleness’ of LGB staff
on campus.
Finally, the correlations between the different parts of the survey were examined.
All parts seemed to correlate significantly with each other, but the highest positive
correlation was found between the degree to which projects are considered important
and the attitude towards equal opportunities and diversity (D = 0.606; p < 0.001).
Another high positive correlation exists between the total score on organizational climate
and the score on well-being (D = 0.592; p < 0.001). A small negative correlation
was found between the total score on organizational climate and the attitude towards
equal opportunities and diversity (D = -0.203; p < 0.001). The other correlations are
all below 0.19.
Conclusions
Although there was a small response percentage and the results should hence be interpreted
with caution, they show that the organization generally has an open climate to
diversity. Relationships between colleagues are good and the competitive atmosphere
is limited. Superiors tend to be open to flexibility for their employees and in general
employees have a positive attitude towards equal opportunities and diversity. This
image is nuanced once we look at faculties and departments separately.
Language differences seem to have an impact on how people feel welcomed and integrated.
Although personnel massively indicate that they have no problem in working
with colleagues from another culture, they are more reluctant with regard to specific
aspects of someone’s culture, like religion. This was also mentioned in the open question.
This survey underlines the need for involvement of all members of personnel and the
need for information about diversity and initiatives around it. By means of the existing
channels, awareness about this matter should be raised. The results (from the open
question) show that there is considerable confusion about terms and about the reason
for initiatives. The survey outcome also confronts us with the necessity to give more
information about trust persons since they play a crucial role in monitoring and fighting
discrimination, intimidation and bullying at work.
A positive signal is that the target groups of projects and initiatives consider these projects
to be very important. This confirms that the diversity policy reaches and is appreciated
by the target groups.