Friday 04-07-2025 - 08:36

Each year, our annual Employee Engagement Survey gives SUs like yours a powerful opportunity to understand how engaged and satisfied your staff are, and to benchmark those insights against previous years, sector peers and trends across wider civil society.

NUS Charity have worked with Atkinson HR Consulting on the Employee Engagement Survey since 2021. This year, we’ve complied a detailed and informative People Insights Report which shines a light on the strengths and opportunities for employee experience across the sector.

In 2025, 2516 respondents across 42 students’ unions filled in the survey, the largest sample we’ve had in it’s history.

This year, 81% of respondents would recommend their organisation as a great place to work; the same positive result we saw in 2024 and 2023. This year also brought some notable improvements across the board, including a 5% rise in staff feeling their views and ideas are listened to.

While there haven’t been any major drops in scores, the data shows ongoing concerns around pay and reward and also communication. Good communication will become especially important during periods of change that we expect due to the financial crisis that is currently engulfing many of our partner institutions.

We hope this movement-wide snapshot (combined with your own organisation’s results if you took part) will support meaningful conversations and action to strengthen your employee’s experience in your students’ unions.

• Find out more and read the report
• Have a question about the report or the EES survey? Get in touch.