Family-Friendly University

The St. Pölten UAS is a family-friendly place to study and work. This has now been confirmed with the basic certificate by the initiative “Hochschule und Familie” (university and family) of the Federal Ministry for Women and Integration which was awarded on Monday. The St. Pölten UAS is planning to continue to take steps towards improving the compatibility of work and family life.

Purposefully Creating Structures

The federal quality seal for family-friendly policies in higher education was given away by federal minister Susanne Raab at the Palais Berg in Vienna this Monday. Its purpose is to honour the St. Pölten UAS’ commitment to creating a particularly family-friendly environment.

“With almost 4,000 students and more than 400 staff members, the St. Pölten UAS is one of the most important players both in the Austrian higher education landscape and among the region’s employers. We consider it very important to give everyone the room they need to develop. We achieve this by deliberately creating structures that ideally adapt to the needs of students and employees with family”, say UAS CEOs Johann Haag and Hannes Raffaseder.

From Childcare to Special Leave

For example, the St. Pölten UAS offers a free childcare option to staff members and students during certain times of the year, for example during Easter week and in the summer holidays. In addition, employees enjoy additional special leave days on Good Friday and from 24 to 31 December every year. Depending on the individual field of work, a flexitime model and a remote work option provide the greatest possible flexibility. A parent-child room is available as a retreat for families.

“We have a high share of female staff members (56%) and part-time employees (51%) at the St. Pölten UAS. Our student body is becoming increasingly heterogeneous as well. We therefore consider it our responsibility to support the compatibility of work and family as best we can. Our goal is to further improve the measures already taken and to implement new ones as well”, explains Silke Seper, Head of the UAS service unit Human Resources and Legal Affairs.

Further Measures: Sensitisation and Flexibilisation

In terms of concrete next steps, the St. Pölten UAS is actively working on making study conditions more flexible and Academic Directors more sensitive for these issues. Executive staff members undergo sensitising training in family friendliness in order to develop an awareness for the real challenges of having to reconcile family and work as well as of nursing relatives, part-time employees, childcare providers, etc. When it comes to research, it is an important objective to promote scientific careers of persons with family responsibilities.

Recertification in Three Years

The St. Pölten UAS is now authorised to carry the quality seal “Familienfreundliche Hochschule” for the next three years. Then it will be up for re-evaluation and recertification.

“Within the framework of the audit, we have defined a total of eight goals that we will implement within the next three years. We want to learn more about the needs of our employees, students, and prospective students while making the Campus St. Pölten more appealing for international researchers with family at the same time. In this context, we wish to understand the term ‘family’ in the broadest sense as including all forms of families, and ‘parents’ as all reference persons regardless of the legal definition of terms”, says Katharina Nöstlinger, Gender & Diversity Officer of the St. Pölten UAS.