Issues like autonomy, control, alienation and workload feature quite significantly. Interest in, and variety of, work, as well as the extent to which one feels one is being stretched or engaged by one's job are also explored.
Once all the data has been collected and analysed, there are plans for it to inform "interventions" aimed at addressing problem areas. Real interventions, addressing real problems, with real money, we're told. Not like the Climate Survey, we're assured, with great sincerity. Though this does, of course, require that people fill it in.
Being late September, most people are finding their medication supplies running low. The trading of pharmaceuticals in the passages has spawned an informal economy of IOUs and promisory notes, and it's only a matter of time before the spring shoots on the Virginia Creeper are stripped and smoked as supplies dry up. Might this affect the data collected? Well, maybe.
What does any of this have to do with anything, you're wondering, fidgeting nervously in your pocket to check that your last Zoloft is still there, in case. Well... more than one person has remarked on the social role of blogging at UCT, aside from its teaching & learning and research potential. That reading about Greg's sleepless nights, or how to become a cyber-dissident, or Marion's bandwidth fast, somehow keeps them sane and connected in an increasingly solitary work environment. That trying to guess who Carnivorous Cow saw reading the Daily Vice was the only exercise their suicidal brain cell had gotten in living memory. That somehow there were other people out there, behind those shut doors and clicking keyboards, and that made it better, easier, somehow, to sigh and keep going.
And so I couldn't help thinking... if HR is committed to improving the organisational health of our institution, perhaps we could route some of that budget to the sustainability of the blogging infrastructure?