Organisation - March 3, 2010

VHL is investigating security

Report on threats at VHL. Management wants to start recording incidents.

Say a student becomes angry and threatens a member of staff. This occurred last summer at the University of Applied Sciences in Velp. There was a similar incident in Leeuwarden. This led management to decide to take a closer look at security and personal safety.
'Our future students currently follow professional or vocational secondary education (MBO or HAVO) and these days those schools are seeing a lot of such incidents. It's best for us to be properly prepared. It also turns out that some members of staff feel threatened or put under pressure by colleagues', says Judit Zijlstra, the project manager of the working group which is putting together a recommendation for the board of directors.
The University of Applied Sciences already has facilities to safeguard personal safety, including confidential contact persons, only students and staff don't always know where they have to go. The working group recommends setting up a special intranet page in addition to recording incidents and appointing a security coordinator.
The directors want to start with recording incidents in order to find out whether there is a problem at all, says Peter Badoux, the interim operations director at VHL, in response. The University is also busy working out its policy on occupational health and safety in more detail. Badoux: 'We are now looking at how we can embed these functions more firmly in the organisation.'