Working Leuphana

What drives you when you think about your working conditions? Is it the delicious espresso from your office colleague? Is it the thought of your back pain from the non-height-adjustable desk? Is it your trusting relationship with your supervisor? Is it the freedom you enjoy or is it the worry about the next temporary job opportunity?

Talk about what constitutes good work for you! We do that too!

Talk to your colleagues, to your superiors. Let our topics and impulses inspire you. Talk about us and with us. During your lunch break, at work, during sports.

Over the next few months, you will see the campaign name "Working Leuphana" and the logo again and again in a wide variety of places. "Working Leuphana" sets impulses to initiate a university-wide discourse on good working conditions and the working culture of the future. Even though our goal is debate, we have chosen action as our path. In numerous small projects, initiatives and actions, we want to encourage you to participate, talk and think.

The brains behind "Working Leuphana" are colleagues like you who want to make a difference. A great committed group has formed, colourfully mixed, highly motivated and open to all interested parties. We are administrative staff, academics, newcomers and old hands, from both central and decentralised institutions. The Staff Council has provided the impetus and, as an organisational unit, offers the platform for cooperation.

What we do

Until the end of March 2023, you will surely come across some of our intiatives. You can always find out about the latest campaigns on our campaign pages and social media presences. We have also created dedicated pages for a few of our projects here and appreciate your interest. Sign up, for example, for the pilto trial of a structured job tandem or see at which places and on which occasions you can meet new and old colleagues. From the end of October, we will also regularly present the current episodes of our podcast "Treffpunkt Kaffeegondel" here.

When the staff council received the signal from the employees that working culture should be THE topic of the future, many colleagues from all over the university wanted to get involved. It quickly became clear that the topic was huge and that we needed a different approach. So we didn't ask ourselves the question of what actually belongs to working culture. We asked ourselves much more: How do you change work culture?

Our answer to this question was: Everywhere where work is done, working culture is formed; from the discussion with superiors to the filing of documents, from the lecture to the tea-kitchen chat, no matter whether in the presidium, in the institute secretariat, in the department of campus management or in the team of a research project. If we succeed in bringing the conversation about good work to all these places, then change comes from below. That's how the idea of a public relations campaign came about.

But we were not yet satisfied with that. We wanted the journey to be part of the goal and tried to align our campaign organisation as much as possible with our common understanding of good work. We work with each other at eye level, autonomously, decentrally, networked, cooperatively, healthily, appreciatively, supportively and always as best we can. We meet each other as talented individuals, do projects that we enjoy, where we can learn something and take something with us.

"Working Leuphana" is a campaign initiated by the staff council of Leuphana University Lüneburg. As a result of two staff meetings in 2021, there was a realisation that there is a great need among employees to talk about the most diverse facets of working culture at Leuphana.

Read more about the background here.