Work pressure too high for more than half of UT staff

21 / 05 / 2026 | Rense Kuipers

More than half of UT employees felt their workload was too high or far too high last year. This emerges, following enquiries by U-Today, from figures that were missing from the recent employee wellbeing survey.

Photo by: RIKKERT HARINK

A few weeks ago, UT presented the results of its biennial staff wellbeing survey. Both satisfaction and trust declined compared with the previous wellbeing survey (2023). According to the researchers, this is understandable given ‘a period characterised by financial pressure, organisational adjustments and uncertainty about the future of higher education’.

One statistic missing from the report concerned experienced workload, even though this question was explicitly included in the survey. Following further enquiries with researchers from the BMS faculty, it appears that workload figures are worse than two years ago. At the end of 2025, 38.6 percent of UT staff described their workload as ‘somewhat too high’, while 14.6 percent experienced it as ‘far too high’.

By comparison, in 2023, 38.5 percent of UT employees said they found their workload ‘somewhat too high’. At that time, 10 percent considered it ‘far too high’ – an increase of around four percentage points.

Of the 53.2 percent of employees who experience their workload as too high, around 43 percent say it is ‘about right’ for them. Fewer than 5 percent experience their workload as somewhat too low or far too low.

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