Culture survey results 2020
- Jon Hill
The EDC’s Culture survey ran from 4th August to the 18th of September. We had 79 responses from both DEG and SEI-Y. The data collected from this will be used in a number of places to inform change, but will primarily form the basis the Athena Swan action plan to be developed for our Silver application in April 2022. The EDC will lead the development of this plan, but will involve staff and students as we go to make it a useful and living plan for EDI change.
Below is a brief summary of the results based on the responses and comments. Overall staff and students like working in the department with 85% of respondents agreeing the department is a great place to work. We are supportive of colleagues and the comments and results makes it clear that unsupportive comments and behaviours are not tolerated (82% agree) and are rarely encountered (78%). The majority of staff (79%) and students (84%) agree that people are generally treated equally. Note there are clear differences in the responses based on roles for these questions.
There are, however, clear issues in a number of places. Across all categories of respondents, bullying and harassment does still occur and is largely experienced by women in the department but is also present in the PhD community and in the supervisor/PhD relationship. There are clear issues around part-time workers with respect to workloads and the fact we pro-rata some fixed costs (e.g. staff and BoS meetings). There is also a feeling of opportunities not being made available equally, particularly with a lack of encouragement to pursue these opportunities. This was particularly the view from female respondents and applies to both general opportunities and promotion/regrading.
In terms of staff there is a view across roles that the annual Personal Development Review is a “tick-box” exercise and the usefulness of this is largely dependent on your line manager or reviewer. Maternity leave is still an issue in terms of reducing opportunity and is seen as a barrier to future career prospects.
The PhD respondents commented on the lack of senior female role models (but noted the increase from zero female professors to three) and also respondents noted the lack of equality in the GTA opportunity allocation with 25% not agreeing that this was an equal opportunity.
Finally, several comments highlighted external factors that affect EDI within the department, especially Brexit and the “hostile environment” for non-British staff and students.
Once again, the EDC thanks everyone for their time (the average response time was 25 minutes). Attached are some results for the whole respondents, but also broken down by roles. There is more analysis to be done on these data and the EDC will update via the wiki and staff meetings as we progress with that work.
Some data from the surveys is given below.
All results split by sex (gender identity results were identical). Female and Male.
The workplace culture survey for the department was sent in August 2020. A full copy of the survey can be found here.