Emil Cunningham of Rankin & Associates Consulting presents a slide show highlighting results of the University of Kansas climate survey to a packed house of faculty and staff in Alderson Auditorium at the Kansas Union on Wednesday, March 29, 2017. The survey was administered in fall 2016.

More than half of University of Kansas faculty and staff have “seriously considered” leaving KU in the past year, according to newly released results from a campuswide survey.

Low pay, limited opportunities for advancement, lack of institutional support, increased workload and state government’s “increasing” role in managing the university were among the top culprits cited.

The much-anticipated results from the KU climate survey administered in fall 2016 were shared with employees and students on Wednesday, for the first time in recent history quantifiably revealing employee discontent at KU.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that there’s been a morale problem with faculty and staff the last few years,” said KU University Senate President Joe Harrington, a professor of English. “There’s a lot of factors at play.”

Write-in comments illuminated employee concerns in addition to numerical data, according to an executive summary prepared by Rankin & Associates Consulting, the firm KU hired to lead the climate survey process.

For faculty, top themes of those comments were salary concerns, a dearth of professional development opportunities and funding, evaluation process concerns, benefits and “the increasing presence of the state government in managing the institution,” the summary said.

For staff, themes that emerged in comments were an “overwhelming workload” resulting from fewer staff members, evaluation process concerns, inequities in scheduling and workload, quality of supervision and family-related issues, according to the summary.

A total of 64 percent of faculty and 55 percent of staff said they seriously considered leaving KU in the past year, according to the summary.

Percentages of minority and disabled employees who said they strongly considered leaving KU were mostly higher. The summary says 68 percent of American Indian, 68 percent of Hispanic, 67 percent of multiracial and 49 percent of African-American employees considered leaving, compared to 57 percent of white employees. More than 70 percent of employees with disabilities considered leaving, compared to 56 percent of employees without disabilities.

Other key “challenges” highlighted in the executive summary:

• 22 percent of faculty said KU’s tenure-track faculty salaries were competitive, while less than 15 percent called salaries competitive for non-tenure track faculty and academic staff professors.

• 19 percent of faculty said KU provided adequate resources to help them manage work-life balance, such as child and elder care, wellness help, housing location help and transportation.

• 22 percent of staff said staff salaries were competitive.

• 32 percent of staff said KU policies were fairly applied.

• 31 percent of staff said staff opinions were valued by KU faculty and administration, while 38 percent said they felt valued by senior administrators.

On Wednesday, Emil Cunningham of Rankin & Associates presented a slide show highlighting survey results at meetings for senior leadership, other employees and students. More than 150 attended the employee meeting, while only about 25 students attended.

Cunningham emphasized that results were honest, if not entirely flattering to KU.

“Senior leadership has not asked us to change a single thing,” Cunningham said. “What you’re about to see here is the first time that folks have seen it and is the full unedited, good, bad and ugly results.”

The university ultimately exists for students, Cunningham said. But employees are the ones who shape students’ experiences at KU.

“If the first person a student interacts with is a staff member, and they’re having a difficult time, that’s problematic,” he said. “We need to look at the campus climate for faculty and staff as well.”

Jennifer Hamer

Feedback from employees was not all negative. Among positive responses shared in the executive summary:

• Overall, 71 percent of KU employees said they were comfortable with the climate in their respective units.

• For faculty, more than 80 percent said KU valued research and they felt valued by students in the classroom.

• For staff, 78 percent said supervisors supported work-life balance; 71 percent said they were given adequate time to complete assigned duties; 82 percent said supervisors supported them taking leave; 77 percent said vacation and benefits were competitive; and 84 percent felt valued by co-workers.

Harrington said state budget cuts and the law requiring KU to allow concealed handguns on campus beginning July 1 have contributed to low morale. So has leadership, he said.

The management style of former provost Jeff Vitter, who left KU at the end of 2015, did not include adequate employee and university governance involvement, Harrington said. Instead, employees were handed down “dictats” to follow, he said.

However, Harrington said, “things have really shifted” since Neeli Bendapudi was hired as provost in mid-2016. Bendapudi is prioritizing transparency and securing buy-in from faculty, staff and student governing bodies, he said.

The KU climate survey, administered last fall, included questions on racial and gender demographics, comfort with the overall climate at KU, experiences with harassment or unwanted sexual contact and other topics.

The survey was open to all KU Lawrence and Edwards campus community members, and was live online for a month.

In all, 6,774 surveys were completed, a 22 percent response rate, according to the executive summary. Surveys less than halfway completed were not included in the final data set.

Of those who completed surveys, 59 percent were students, 12 percent were faculty and 29 percent were staff, according to the summary. Cunningham said response rates were much higher among employees than students — 57 percent of tenure track faculty responded, for example, while just 15 percent of undergraduate students responded.

The complete climate survey results fill a 600-page document, said principal investigator Trina Ramirez of KU’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

She said in the coming weeks her office will analyze the “huge data set” in an attempt to make it more understandable and useful in making improvements at KU.

A sense of belonging is key to everyone’s success at KU, said Jennifer Hamer, KU’s acting vice provost of diversity and equity, and a professor of American studies and African and African-American studies.

“Faculty members think about leaving all the time — that’s part of the business,” Hamer said. “We just don’t want people to want to leave, (like) the situation is so bad that you just want to get out of here.”