43% of respondents in Penn State staff satisfaction survey have confidence in senior leadership

WPSU | By Sydney Roach

Published October 10, 2025 at 1:21 PM EDT

Penn State students walk past Old Main on the University Park campus in fall 2025.

More than half of Penn State’s staff say they don’t have confidence in senior leadership, according to a newly released staff satisfaction survey.

The survey was sent in February to 13,834 employees, including full-time staff, technical service employees, administrators, executives and academic administrators. About 52% of people who received the survey responded.

Richard Boyer is with ModernThink, the third-party firm that conducted the survey. He shared the results during an online webinar on Thursday. He said employees highly rated staff well-being, benefits, job satisfaction and supervisor effectiveness.

This slide, shared during an online webinar, shows the overall results of Penn State's staff satisfaction survey in 2025. Staff well-being rated the highest, with confidence in senior leadership and performance management rated the lowest.

Boyer also shared where the university got its lowest ratings. Only 43% of respondents said they have confidence in senior leadership.

“It’s cliche to say, but we are indeed living through challenging times in the higher ed world for lots of different reasons," Boyer said. "And that does create additional challenges as it relates for senior leadership communication.”

Jennifer Wilkes, the vice president for human resources and chief human resources officer at Penn State, referenced the university’s recent decision to close seven campuses and how that could have impacted the survey. Though the university did not announce there would be closures until the day after the survey ended. The survey was open from February 10-24, and Penn State announced its decision to close some campuses on February 25.

ModernThink compared the answers in a Penn State staff satisfaction survey to other universities in the Carnegie Classifications of Higher Education, which includes 3,927 institutions. Penn State rated lower on several questions related to confidence in senior leadership when compared to its peers in the Carnegie Classification benchmark.

“Penn State leadership has discussed these results, and we acknowledge that we have work to do to connect with you all as we navigate these times of change," Wilkes said. "We are committed to doing that work, and we ask you to join us in that effort.”

Only 30% of survey respondents said they believe senior leadership will take action based on the results of this survey.

Wilkes said Penn State’s leadership will focus on improving confidence in senior leadership and on improving performance management, which was the other lowest rated factor. Penn State HR said it’s reaching out to unit leaders to develop action plans in response to the survey, which are expected to be complete by the first week of December.