Highlights from this year’s Staff Experience Survey

• Dr Markos Koumaditis shares key themes from the 2025 Staff Experience Survey results
• The Staff Survey Institutional Report is now available to view on the Equality and Diversity Unit website

The Staff Experience Survey presents an invaluable opportunity to understand the experiences of staff at Oxford, across all aspects of University life.

This year, 10,838 University staff (63%) shared their experiences of working here – a significant increase from the 2023 survey. It was particularly encouraging to see a rise in responses from academic (up 4%) and research staff (up 6%), as well as the professional services community (up 4%). I am grateful to all those who contributed their views and provided such a robust evidence base from which to move forward.

Key insights

Using People Insight for external surveys allows us to benchmark against the sector. The University’s engagement score (the degree to which staff feel connected to their place of work) is 6% above the sector average, indicating staff pride in working here, strong collegiate relationships and high job satisfaction.

Oxford also compares favourably to other HEIs in a number of other areas of the staff experience, including leadership, wellbeing and workload, being managed, and inclusion.

Your input to the 2023 survey helped us identify areas for improvement. Overall satisfaction with pay and benefits has improved across academic, research and professional services staff. The Pay & Conditions Review likely contributed to this improvement, including more favourable responses to 'I feel my pay is fair'. Although satisfaction is still below the sector average, ongoing work on the Academic Career and Reward Framework will further address these issues.

Staff perceptions of their opportunities for development and growth have improved compared to 2023. However, 30% of academic and research staff dedicated only one to two days to career development last year, and 14% did not spend any time on it.

The results are encouraging, though they also identify areas where more work is required, such as preventing and handling bullying and harassment cases. While reporting has increased among those experiencing issues (possibly due to the new Report + Support tool), confidence in complaint handling and satisfaction with report outcomes has decreased.

The second broad theme relates to perceptions of transparency in decision-making, openness of communication and opportunities for staff to contribute to change.

Taking action

We will continue to focus on listening and making improvements. As in previous years, the 2025 results will be crucial in our future planning and essential to our delivery under the University's People Strategy. Divisions and departments will also be analysing local results and making plans to respond to localised themes.

I look forward to sharing details of how your feedback will inform People initiatives in the next academic year and beyond.

Find out more

View the Staff Experience Survey Institutional Report.