University staff at high risk of psychological harm

Productivity pressure, exhaustion and overtime put pressure on mental health in the education sector.

Higher-up staff are seemingly exempted from these risks, with senior executives and deans rating their workplaces as medium or low risk, while all other staff groups reported high-risk conditions, according to the newly released 2025 Australian University Census on Staff Wellbeing.

The survey was conducted between October 2025 and January 2026, surveying over 11,000 employees across 42 universities. The Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) framework was used to assess whether psychological help was prioritised, with findings revealing a clear workplace divide.

Referring to the PSC framework, a lack of commitment to leadership and poor communication, consultation, and workload management were identified.

Sixty-nine per cent of staff did not feel their senior management valued psychological help as much as productivity, and 73 per cent said risks to mental health were not actively monitored by an employer.

Perhaps the most shocking statistic – 100 per cent of ranked Australian universities had average scores that indicated high or very high psychological risk.

According to National Tertiary Education Union national assistant secretary Gabe Gooding, this demonstrates “a sector racing to the bottom on staff wellbeing following a sustained period of aggressive restructuring across the board”.

Gooding highlighted that safe workplaces “are simply non-existent” in several universities, with less than 10 per cent of surveyed staff reporting low-risk conditions, and more than 80 per cent who felt their mental health was put at risk.

She added: “It doesn’t matter if you’re at the top or the bottom of the rankings – staff mental health is being traded off for productivity, and even the best institutions are firmly within the high-risk category.”

Shockingly, university staff are far more likely to be exposed to psychological risk than workers in almost any other sector. Eighteen per cent of university staff felt their workplace was low risk, compared to a national average of 54 per cent overall, and even the highest-ranking universities scored a 34.9 on the PSC, at least six points below the low-risk benchmark.

In addition, unpaid labour is increasingly being relied upon to meet productivity demands: 71 per cent of staff report regularly working beyond contracted or paid hours, with an estimated $271 million a year worked in unpaid labour.

Over 80 per cent of university staff report rates of high emotional exhaustion, almost double those in the broader workforce.

Gooding reinforced how “the toll on emotionally exhausted workers is no longer speculative”, adding: “staff in very-high risk environments face more than a 100 per cent increase in the incidence of persistent depressive disorders”.

It’s no surprise, then, that 27 per cent of interviewed staff reportedly intend to leave their university within a year.

With a clear disconnect between management and frontline education staff, it appears something needs to give. Gooding said: “The refusal of most vice-chancellors to support this study when invited is an indication that will need to be dragged to accountability via government intervention.”

She highlighted the failure of university governance and reinforced that “the NTEU strongly supports the report’s recommendations, including making PSC scores a core management KPI, easing productivity pressure through proper funding, and introducing regular, independent reporting”.

Assessment and response to these risks were recommended to be incorporated into the Higher Education Framework Standards.

Gooding said: “The law is very clear about all workers being entitled to a safe workplace. Universities are not meeting these obligations, and so we need interventions to ensure that this will change – and fast.”