EUR carried out an employee survey last November, and the results have been published recently. The survey, that was completed by 1165 staff members, which is 57,3 percent of the whole EUR staff, makes no distinction between Dutch and international staff members’ opinions about the EUR working environment and does not specifically target internationalization or integration.
The SSC HR&F (Shared Service Centre Human Resources and Finances) specifically looked at differences based on gender, academic and supporting staff, managerial and non-managerial staff and age categories. The distinction between Dutch and international staff was not considered relevant enough to include in the results, which makes it impossible to see whether these two groups come across different issues when working at EUR. If faculties request for this type of information, it can be delivered to them. Additionally, the survey did not include questions about the international environment of the university.
Points to improve
However, the (anonymous) answers to the open questions are reported for every faculty, which gives an impression of the English responses of the international faculty staff. Often mentioned topics are internationalization, integration, low salaries and too little communication between faculties. Some responses indicate that the EUR should do more of an effort to attract foreign staff: “University’s salary scales should be comparable to international standards to attract more international researchers”, whereas others complain about the lacking integration policy of EUR: “…much correspondence of important matters
takes place in Dutch. It would indeed help if the university subsidized part of the language courses to facilitate this process.”. Also, the quality of the campus environment and the catering service should be improved, according to members of the international staff.
Not just the internationals
The survey was conducted by Effectory, an external independent organization. The overall results show that especially the loyalty and engagement of the EUR staff need to be improved. They also reflect the opinions of the international staff, to a certain extent, as 43,4 percent of the surveyed staff is satisfied with the internal communication, and 23,4 percent of is not satisfied with their salaries. This shows that these particular problems are not only experienced by the internationals staff members, but seem to have an impact on a larger part of the EUR staff. The deans and directors have been requested to set up an action plan to tackle these issues before July 1st. IS
