I loved working in Pleasance gym as a receptionist. Great team, good management.Full time shifts could be a bit difficult if you don't like to get up early. Overall - great!

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Flexible

Postdoctoral Researcher (Current Employee) - Edinburgh - 22 June 2022

Perfect job for work and life balance, and highly flexible job.High reputation and smart working colleaguesIf temporary or fixed term, no guarantee for extension.

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Insights into University of Edinburgh

Based on 16 survey responses

What people like

Fair pay for job
Supportive environment
Time and location flexibility

Areas for improvement

Trust in colleagues
Sense of belonging
Energising work tasks

Nice side work

Demonstrator (Former Employee) - Chemistry department - 27 May 2022

Easy to incorporate further work between education and research, with the flexibility to what you need to earn for a given time. It's hard to use the system to claim

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Buen salario y trabajo agradable

CATERING ASSISTANT (Former Employee) - Edinburgh - 6 April 2022

Sitio agradable y bueno para empezar una vida en Inglaterra. El salario es mas elevado que en el resto de cafeterías por ser una universidad pública.

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Plenty of scope for development

Various Positions (Current Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 4 April 2022

If you are ambitious and proactive, you will be able to find a place within the University, although this may involve moving between several School before you find the place that you feel is best for you.

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Teaching assistant

Teaching Assistant (Former Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 30 March 2022

Ok as a student job, not recommended for long term career development especially in social sciences. Lots of bureaucracy but Edinburgh is one if the best cities in the world to live in!

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Not a great place to work

Laboratory Technician (Former Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 24 March 2022

Management only care about turnover of profits and not staff morale and working conditions, Any thoughts on how you wish yo improve your working week is shot down and having to work over Christmas without any considerations to personal life. Staff are dispensable.

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PhD Student

PhD student (Former Employee) - Edinburgh Royal Infirmary - 22 March 2022

Great place to study your PhD. innovative, collaborative, well-supported. Your supervisors are keen to listen as well as empower you on a steep and often rocky path to complete your PhD. I can recommend.

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No work-life balance

Postdoctoral Research Associate (Former Employee) - Kings Buildings - 14 March 2022

No work-life balance.You have to compete all the time and publish papers.Fundamental work is not much appreciated.Depends on the research group, but in general poor job culture.But learning on an everyday basis keeps the job interesting.

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Used to be better

Technical Assistant (Current Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 9 March 2022

Used to have a reasonable pension scheme & pay but not any more. These have been eroded away over time. Bureaucracy causes simple task to take months

Pros

Great learning opportunities.

Cons

No job/role progression.

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Jobs at University of Edinburgh

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Fun workplace

Visitor Centre Assistant (Current Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 20 February 2022

I work at the university giftshop where the work is relaxed, and the employees are all kind, helpful and productive. I would highly recommend working here given the chance. The standard contract is 15 hours.

Pros

Decent pay, fun employees, flexible with working hours since most employees are students and the team is aware of this

Cons

Nothing really it's a pretty good job to have

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Very flexible work

Lecturer (Former Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 12 February 2022

Family friendly work policies for academic jobs. If something doesn't work, there are plenty of people to talk to about adjusting work balance. Work is hugely seasonal.

Pros

Flexi work

Cons

Hard to get promoted like any academic job

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Good place to work but very long hours and questionable higher management decisions

Administrator (Former Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 4 February 2022

Good place to work with excellent facilities and friendly academics. Ample networking opportunities. Unfortunately senior management imposes changes without providing enough resources. Deadlines are awfully tight, so any job ends up being acutely stressful

Pros

Benefits and holiday allowance. Salaries are higher than at other universities

Cons

Long hours, stress, lack of support for those at the coalface, appalling change management

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Worst university I have worked at

Professor (Current Employee) - anonymous - 1 February 2022

The faculty at this university have very low status. Organizations (financial admin, HR, estates etc.) live inside their own bubbles. They answer to nobody outside of their bubbles, they have no connection to teaching or research, and yet they control most functions within the institution. Inside each bubble they are in competition for advancement, so they invent new processes which they lard upon faculty and students on a monthly basis. Causing failures of education and research are of no concern to them.

Pros

For some reason which escapes me this university attracts very good students.

Cons

The faculty are powerless to affect positive change.

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Heavy workload and understaffed

Administrator (Current Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 28 January 2022

Heavy workload and not enough staff. There should be more cross training for work to get done when you're on annual leave. You come back and have to catch up on everything that happened while you were away.

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A brilliant, vibrant community of enquiry, ruined by Vogon managers who never saw a metric without making it a target

Teaching Support Provider (Current Employee) - Edinburgh - 15 January 2022

In my time at the University of Edinburgh, I have enjoyed working with brilliant teachers and intelligent students, and have learned a ton in the process; I've also had every ounce of joy I used to take in the work drained out of it by self-serving, obstructive managers determined to route every significant decision through their offices while dragging teaching standards into the dirt -- rather than letting the actual experts, the course organisers, run their own courses.The university is notorious for its over-use of casual 'Guaranteed Hours' contracts (equivalent to zero hours, once you've used up the usually inadequate number of hours guaranteed) - and although university HR *have* come to an agreement with the Universities & Colleges Union for rules to get casualised staff onto fractional contracts, the schools just come up with nonsensical rules that make Guaranteed Hours staff's lives even more precarious, in order to weasel their way out of giving people the job security they deserve. I've done the best work of my life here, and the management are going out of their way to make it a career dead end.

Pros

Brilliant academic colleagues, Smart & curious students

Cons

Precarity & casualisation, Marking and tutorial prep usually take much longer than the number of hours you are able to claim, Obstructive, self-serving Vogon managers

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Great opportunities for professional development

Data Coordinator (Current Employee) - Edinburgh - 4 January 2022

This is an excellent place to work in an amazing city. I would recommend. There is a great culture and a very nice environemnt to work in. It is a large organisation though, so deparments can vary.

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Unhappy staff

Professional Services (Current Employee) - George Square - 25 December 2021

Having worked in different professional services roles across different schools within the university, I feel well placed to write this. For professional services staff, there is no clear progression path or direct promotion opportunities available. Staff are really unhappy and bored in their work as the university has streamlined processes in recent years, which has created less diversity in roles and fewer opportunities to grow. Complaints fall on deaf ears as managers are not trained to deal with this so it is brushed under the carpet. Lots of training on wellbeing etc. but it feels more like a tick box exercise than anything else. Student reviews are consistently poor towards academic support but nothing changes as the culture is embedded. It has created a two tier system particularly in professional services where staff at the lower grades (3-6) are generally expected to just 'put up with it'. There is a lot of sick leave and overall unhappiness. I don't personally know anybody who loves their job, which is awful, and also the reason I'm leaving.

Pros

Flexible working is possible, Christmas closure and job security for permanent staff.

Cons

No formal structure for career progression, Culture of bullying amongst staff members, HR are terrible.

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Unsupportive management

Customer Service (Former Employee) - Edinburgh - 9 December 2021

Overly concerned with reputation and not supportive of staff. Very much a management versus staff culture. Teams are short staffed and attitude of management is "just get on with it".System/IT support is poor.

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Horrible place to work

Project Leader (Former Employee) - Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh - 11 June 2021

Don't take a fixed term contract here and watch out for the USS pension which is worthless unless you do more than 2 years. Treated as a cheap contract resource not as a staff member. No training, no performance reviews, no progression and none of the other 'employee' benefits.

Pros

None

Cons

Environment, Ethos.

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Agréable

Domestic Assistant (Former Employee) - Edinburgh - 16 May 2021

Je n'ai pas grand chose à dire, mon expérience à été superbe. J'y ai rencontré des gens super et compréhensible et patients.Je suis arrivé et je ne parlais pas un mot d'anglais et maintenant mon Anglais et meilleurs que mon Français et c'est en partie grâce aux gens avec qui j'ai travaillée.J'ai vécu une bonne expérience et je le souhaite et conseils à d'autres.