Workplace culture survey 2022

The EDC carried out the 2022 culture survey in December 2021-January 2022. The data from this survey will inform the Athena Swan application due in July 2022 and summaries of the survey will also be sent to various committees and groups. Below is a summary of some of the key findings based on both the comments and quantitative data. You can view the summary of the 2020 survey on the wiki. We had a total of 120 responses (compared to 79 in 2020).

As in the previous survey, the majority of respondents think the department is a great place to work (85%) and it is a supportive environment, with 79% agreeing that it is clear that unsupportive language is unacceptable and is rarely encountered (74%). Where remarks and language used are issues they are around disabilities and male dominance in meetings and conversations. However, some comments in the survey note that there has been a clear shift in not tolerating these kinds of remarks in recent years and that it is occasional. There was also an acceptance that most of any remarks made are not with malicious intent, and that tolerance and forgiveness are also important to foster an inclusive environment. A large majority of respondents also agreed that the department looks after their mental health and wellbeing (72%), but there are clear issues to work on here, with lack of social events noted by several comments, although with the acknowledgement that COVID has hampered this.

There are a number of issues highlighted in the survey which are not only at a departmental level, but are an area of concern. In particular the secondment and regrading opportunities for PSS are still opaque and for technical PSS almost non-existent. This limits career development for technical staff in particular. Similarly, PDRs and line manager support are varied, with some staff finding the PDR very helpful but others less so. This then feeds into finding career development opportunities, with some line managers being proactive in helping staff develop, whilst others are supportive but largely reactive. In particular there were issues around promotion of T&S staff, and how we support that within the department. PGRs also noted that their supervisor plays a large role in career development, but comments indicated a more reactive approach to this.

Workload was clearly a large issue in the survey. PSS in particular found their workload was not transparent (there is no equivalent of the academic workload allocation model). Academic staff felt overworked and there are issues around how individuals are chosen for roles within the department, including teaching. This is reflected in how work allocation is viewed with 61% of respondents feeling it was fair and transparent, but a large number of respondents giving a neutral or negative response to this. Part-time staff in particular felt that working part-time hours over the full week generated specific issues around workload and expectations.

Focusing on PGR respondents, GTA allocation was viewed as a potential issue still, despite the move to a newer system, with 39% feeling neutral or disagreeing with the statement compared to 25% in the 2020 survey. Comments centred around opportunities being determined by the research groups and/or supervisor, rather than being fairly distributed. I should apologise to our MSc by Research students here as the survey had “PhD” as the category, not PGR as it should have had.

Finally, COVID has provided a mixed bag of impacts! There are clearly individuals who have been badly affected by COVID in terms of productivity, mental and physical health, and how this might then manifest in terms of career progression. Equally a number of individuals have thrived with working at home, feeling more productive. A number of comments rightly pointed out that the impacts of COVID, particularly on PGR students, research and academic staff will take many years to manifest. Comments were also mixed with concerns raised about how we continue being a friendly and inclusive workplace when we have a mixed working practice, and how we help new staff integrate into the department. Many comments were around workload, with the University moving to semesters immediately following the move back from online-only teaching and the impacts of that shift of teaching online last academic year (although noted that some of that shift was positive). This increase in workload impacted research time for academic staff. There were clearly also very individual impacts around workload, supervision and a lack of feeling part of the department.

Data from the surveys are below:

Data are not split by sex or gender identity as this is not straightforward this time. They will be for the full application, which will be circulated in draft form before final submission to the department.