About a decade ago, she used to track her overtime – she was a Master’s coordinator at the time. But it was so depressing that Jascha de Nooijer, now Professor of Interprofessional Teaching and Learning, eventually stopped tracking. “You can’t do the work without overtime,” she concluded. “I am very happy with the freedom I have as an academic, and with our generous salary, but if you don’t work in the evenings and weekends, then you fall behind. I supervise PhD students, who do research and have to request grants, the latter always comes on top of your own work.” Working fifty hours a week is normal.
Nobody would be surprised to discover she doesn’t use up all her annual leave. And she is not alone. For years, Maastricht University has been battling a ‘leave reservoir’, which at the end of December 2025, had risen to 634,368 hours, an average of 112 per UM employee: 128 for academic staff and 91 for support staff (see box).
The scientific staff
Of the ten academic staff members Observant interviewed, seven were unable to use up all their annual leave, and the three who did manage occasionally had to get creative. They exchanged their hours for a new bike, a gym membership, to save up for a sabbatical, had it paid out (up to 38 hours per year), or just finished what they were working on while their holiday had already started. PhD student Juul Hennissen of the School of Health Professions Education is the exception. “The department insists that annual leave must be taken. I often go away for a long trip in the summer, it’s quieter then.”
Too many tasks, not enough hours
What is one of the most important reasons for the reservoir? A structural excess of tasks for the available hours, the scientists conclude unanimously. Like Bram Fleuren, Assistant Professor for the Work and Organisational Psychology department. He “enjoys” his work, he explains, doesn’t consider the teaching “a burden”, and talks about his “own business” at the university. And that business is seldom closed: “It is the nature of your work as a researcher: you’re never really finished, there’s always something you could do. Grant requests take the most time, you aren’t obligated to, but you do want to be able to realise your ideas. You can’t do that without money.”
He has “saved up a few hundred hours” by now, he’s not sure of the exact number, and happily calls himself one of the “worst offenders” in his department. Although he has just returned from a three-week break. “That was good, I feel all refreshed now.” He expects that his hours of leave will reduce significantly more quickly once the “new family member” arrives. Besides that: “I supervise PhD students and have to set a good example, the last thing you want is to have to pay them large sums of extra money at the end of their contract [that applies to all employees who leave, their remaining hours are paid out], as that affects the budget of the whole department.” That is probably the reason that one PhD student at the School of Business and Economics, who wishes to remain anonymous, was inundated with emails from HR. The end of her contract was coming up, so she had to use up her annual leave. “I told my supervisors that the messages were driving me mad. They were very nice and said, don’t take it personally. Surely my primary responsibility is making sure my PhD research is completed on time? That didn’t happen. I would have preferred fewer days off and finishing my thesis on time.”
No replacement
Another thing that makes it harder to use up all of the – in everyone’s eyes, very generous – annual leave: it is almost impossible to find a temporary replacement. And that has nothing to do with a lack of willing on the part of other colleagues. Because those colleagues are also drowning in work, and there are many tasks – grant requests, research – they simply can’t take over. The result is only planning holidays at Christmas or over the summer. And the latter is no easy task for staff members who have a lot of teaching tasks. “I spend my time until the middle of July checking theses, then I go away on holiday, and then it all starts up again by mid-August,” says Thomas Frissen, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and programme coordinator for the bachelor Digital Society. And taking a week off during the academic year? “If you take a week off in the middle of the season, you shoot yourself in the foot. Nobody can take over for you.” Rick Schumans, Academic Teacher at the Law Faculty, has experience there. He once decided to take a week off in September. Before he left, he had to arrange a replacement tutor, an alternative for the lecture, and a contact for the students. All of it more stressful than his holiday was restful. “I am never doing that again.” All Carijn Beumer, Assistant Professor at the Faculty Health, Medicine and Life Sciences and coordinator of a number of modules, can do is nod in agreement. “The structure of the academic year is such that there is very little time between periods. That’s the problem.” She takes four weeks off in July, during at least part of her son’s school holidays. “You work yourself to the bone to get everything finished before you leave and when you get back, there are a bajillion emails waiting in your inbox. And then the catchup starts. Awful. In my out-of-office message, I tell people: ‘I’m not going to read your message, please email me when I return.’” Only her PhD students have an ‘emergency button’ should they need to reach her in those four weeks. “They have to be able to carry on, so I keep a lookout for any messages from them.”
Own choice
Speaking of replacements: Esther Heuts, Programme Director for Medicine and oncological surgeon at MUMC+, only leaves “if it isn’t a problem for my colleagues at the clinic and if I can finish up my teaching work”. Sometimes she cancels a planned holiday if she can see that there are not enough people scheduled at the treatment centre, which would mean that patients with suspected breast cancer would not all get their results within the timeframe. The same applies for any teaching issues that can’t wait. If that means she doesn’t use up all her annual leave, then that is her own choice, she says. “I enjoy my work, both the patient care and the teaching.”
Solution?
Is there a solution? Professor De Nooijer is not optimistic. “This is not something you can easily fix, we’ve tried many things in the past. I think we just have to accept it.” Assistant Professor Beumer is also not very hopeful. “I will obviously have to try to use up my hours, I just don’t see how. The norm hours also have to be fairer; for years, we have had too little time for a whole range of tasks. That’s up to UM to sort out. We also need a different [read, shorter] academic year.”
Assistant Professor Fleuren does see opportunities: “Recruit PhD candidates using the unused leave pot. That would ease the pressure. That way I don’t have to keep requesting grants – you’re often asking for money to fund a young researcher to carry out your idea.” Assistant Professor Frissen is critical: “There aren’t enough colleagues who would benefit, even though everyone would lose hours.”
Posters in the basement of Henri Spaaklaan, last year. FSE is urging staff to take holiday leave
Photo: Joey Roberts
Support staff
It appears to be slightly easier for support staff to use up their annual leave, as they often have replacements more readily available. Take Eric Bleize, schedule planner and responsible for Canvas and Eleum at FASoS. He does this work together with a colleague. “So I can go away. The workload isn’t extreme, although there are busy periods. Six times a year, we have to publish everything online on time, so that requires some extra work.” He normally manages to use all his leave – holidays, odd jobs around the house, or by buying a bike. The overtime he accrued working during an extremely busy year is still on his overview, “I’m retiring in four years, they’ll be finished before then”.
Most of his colleagues manage to use up all their leave by the end of the year, says Bleize. Like Birgitte Hendrickx, deputy head of the Student Service Centre. “Time off is much too important. It’s good to take some time away and switch off. I encourage people to use their annual leave, so I have to set a good example. I feel comfortable logging off for three or four weeks over the summer. I also hire people who are responsible enough and can make decisions. They can solve anything that arises. You have to make yourself a little less essential; that’s good for you and for everyone. I don’t think there can be any reason someone should think they can’t take a few weeks off over the summer. If the workload is too high, then as an employer, we are doing something wrong.” That’s one of the reasons she wants to move away from only having one person in the organisation with the necessary expertise. “You see that a lot in IT. It makes for a vulnerable organisation and leads to high workloads. If something goes wrong, then you have to call that person in the evening or at the weekend. You shouldn’t want that.”
The two support staff members interviewed who were unable to use up their annual leave had various reasons why. Lots of work, nobody to take over. But also, making sure to have a sufficient buffer so that you never run into problems, for example as a carer. Werner Teeling, information manager at FPN’s education desk: “I used to work for an occupational health and safety service provider, and it was precisely there that I received no support when I needed care leave. The helplessness and pain I felt back then run deep. I don’t want to go through something like that again, which is why I’ve been saving up leave for several years now.”
Difference between academic and support staff
One more thing: academic staff have much more freedom and don’t need to justify their absence if they are away for half a day or more, whereas support staff have to account for all their hours. Sometimes that stings a little, especially when offices are half empty and you “could set off a cannon in the building. You just have to take it as read that they’re working from home.” Leo Köhler, Professor of Clinical Anatomy and head of the Anatomy and Embryology Department, recognises the sentiment. “Sometimes the support staff feel that the academic staff can just do what they like – I suspect that’s a bit of jealousy speaking. Don’t get me wrong: I am very satisfied with our people. But I think they don’t always know what academic staff do.”
Do academic staff abuse their level of freedom? The Director of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Bakir Bulić, is adamant. “I don’t believe that at all. Of course, sometimes someone might cut corners, but when I see how much work is produced, whether that’s research or teaching, then you know how hard they work. Some of that is self-imposed.” Professor De Nooijer can confirm that: “We do have a lot of freedom, but I think we actually work extra hard not to abuse that trust.”