{"id":94537,"date":"2019-01-31T13:37:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T12:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=94537"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:23:12","slug":"support-staff-unhappy-high-work-pressure-levels-persist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2019\/01\/31\/support-staff-unhappy-high-work-pressure-levels-persist\/","title":{"rendered":"Support staff unhappy, high work pressure levels persist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The university\u2019s support services (particularly the General Management Directorate and the University Library) scored low on average in the 2018 Employee Survey, according to findings released on Wednesday. High levels of work pressure experienced by employees \u2013 a major issue at Erasmus University \u2013 remains a persistent problem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button><\/figure><\/div>

The survey, conducted once every two years, measures a variety of criteria. These include employee satisfaction, the degree of commitment and engagement among employees, how they perceive the university as an employer, their manager\u2019s performance, their loyalty to the organisation, and how employees feel the organisation could mitigate staff turnover issues. In total, the survey looked at nine factors.<\/p>\n

ESPhil and ESE doing well<\/span><\/p>\n

General Management Directorate employees gave an average score of 6.2 for all nine factors, the lowest score of all departments and faculties. Concerns expressed by these employees focused on issues such as efficiency (4.8), leadership (5.9) and staff turnover (5.9). The highest rating was given by Erasmus School of Philosophy employees (ESPhil): a 7.7. This faculty did especially well when it came to matters such as loyalty and staff turnover. Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) also came of the survey with a high score, with ESE employees giving a higher score than the university average in all nine areas.<\/p>\n

Looking at the faculties, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) had the most mediocre score: employees gave the nine factors an average score of 6.7. Efficiency is also a sticking point at ESSB with employees giving it a score of only 5.5. The 7.0 score for the university as a whole in 2018 is slightly lower than the 7.1 from the previous survey in 2016.<\/p>\n

Work pressure<\/h2>

The previous employee survey revealed that work pressure was extremely high. As a result of this finding, the university implemented numerous measures and initiated programmes to tackle work pressure. As far as that goes, there\u2019s still much to be done, as the efforts were not reflected in the score: when answering the question of how employees would rate their work pressure, 40.6 percent answered \u2018too high\u2019 and 11.7 percent responded with \u2018much too high\u2019. Altogether, that is 4.1 percentage points higher than in 2016.<\/p>\n

\n