The results of the 2025 Staff Survey at Northumbria University are damning and shameful.
Comparable results generated by the NSS, or module evaluations, would see academic staff put on capability, or sacked. Little wonder Northumbria UCU members recently passed a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the university executive. These results condemn their ‘strategy’ and their plans to fund it by freezing staff pay.
Launching a Staff Survey the day after telling staff their pay would be frozen is either an act of blissful ignorance and wilful incompetence (‘we think we’re doing a good job’), hubris (‘we’re doing such a good job we think you don’t care about what we do to you’), or contempt (‘we don’t care what you think’).
The reasons for these deplorable results are obvious and lamentable: staff are treated badly at Northumbria, and know it. After being forced to work on campus during Covid, a cyber attack, floods, a roof flying off, and cuts to research and preparation time, staff have had enough. So-called pay ‘rises’ have actually been below inflation pay cuts for decades; plans to freeze pay will make this much worse. Staff have to cart laptops around to ‘flexi-desk’ or ‘hotdesk’ in shared rooms, with useless heating, rubbish WiFi, and leaky ceilings and windows. We deserve better. Will we get it?
- When asked whether ‘The University manages change effectively’ only 27.8% of all staff agreed or strongly agreed.
- When asked whether ‘When changes are made they are usually for the better’ only 23.5% of all staff agreed or strongly agreed.
- Only 40.5% of all staff think their pay is fair. In every faculty, less than half of academic staff think their pay is fair (HW: 48.5%, SE 44.5%, SC: 30.4%)
- A staggeringly small 22.9% of academic staff think the university manages change effectively, and even fewer (17.5%) think that changes are made for the better.
- Even in the VC’s office, only 54% of professional support staff thought changes were managed effectively or for the better. In Finance and Planning, the area presumably overseeing the implementation of management’s horrific plans for pay, only 27.1% thought change was managed effectively.
- 65% said they intended to still be working here in 12 months’ time – meaning 35% don’t!
- 64% said they would recommend NU as a great place to study – meaning 36% wouldn’t.
- 40% would recommend NU as a great place to work – meaning 60% wouldn’t.
- 41% said they felt their pay was fair – meaning 59% don’t.
- 9% said they were satisfied with their physical environment – meaning over 60% aren’t.
- Less than half of academics (48%) think they are treated with respect.
- Staff are very glum about their opportunities for progression. Only 27% of academic staff answered positively.
In individual Faculties the results from academic staff were even worse:
- In Health and Wellbeing, only 32.5% thought change was managed effectively, and 21.6% thought change was for the better.
- In Science and Environment, only 30.5% thought change was managed effectively, and 23.8% thought it was for the better. Only 37.5% were satisfied with their physical environment, and only 44.9% would recommend Northumbria as a great place to work.
- The worst results by far were in Society and Culture: only 9% thought change was managed effectively, and 8.3% thought for the better. Only 31% were satisfied with their physical environment, and 30% with their pay.
Data for academic and research salaried staff and indicate +ve responses unless specified otherwise
