What’s the best thing about working at your university? How do your colleagues and managers make you feel valued? In what areas do you need more support? These are among the questions we will be asking in the inaugural Times Higher Education Best University Workplace survey, which is online now.
We want to find out which UK universities excel when it comes to keeping employees content – from pay levels to recognition of the extra hours staff put in. We also want to know how the experience of working in a university differs according to role, discipline, level of seniority, age, gender, terms of contract and other variables.
John Gill, THE editor, said he hoped that the survey would shed light on aspects of university life that are often overlooked, and also help to provide new and valuable data on what it is like to work in the UK’s universities day to day.
“There are often reports and analyses on individual aspects of the working lives of university staff, but valuable though these are, they do not give the full picture,” he said.
“Our aim for the THE Best University Workplace survey is to get a broad picture of what it is like to work in a UK university in 2013, but also to allow us to dig down into the data and assess how individual factors affect the experience of university staff at all levels and in all roles.”
The independent online survey has been developed after consultation with Rob Briner and Yiannis Gabriel, professors at the University of Bath School of Management, as well as professional bodies and trade unions, and is open to all university-employed academics and administrators.