On Thursday 30 October 2025, Ghent University issued the call for the new application round for job reclassification for administrative and technical staff (ATP) at UGent. ATP-colleagues who meet the conditions, and who believe that their position has changed over time to such an extent that it belongs in a higher job class, can submit an application for reclassification in the course of November or December 2025.
The conditions, as well as the course of the procedure, can be found on the Ghent University intranet.
The final deadline for submitting an application for reclassification in this application round is 31 December 2025 at midnight.
ACOD members who wish to do so can call on the support of our union in the preparation of an application, and can receive assistance when they are heard in the context of this procedure. You can contact us by email to ACOD@UGent.be
Are you planning to submit an application and would you like advice or help with this? Then don't wait too long! (Also take into account the end-of-year holidays.)
Numerous problems in the procedure
The job reclassification procedure was significantly changed in 2024.
The most important adjustment was the deletion of the previously required potential assessment report. By removing this in fact very arbitrary obstacle, many colleagues were finally able to submit an application at the end of 2024.
In addition, a number of changes were made to the weighting criteria, and the course of the procedure was adjusted.
The weighting and appeal procedures from the first application round in the new working method are currently still ongoing. The decisions that have already been taken by the Executive Council to date show that in this round about 40 positions in a higher job class have already been scaled. In addition, it is also clear that many applications will not have led to an increase in job class. The latter in itself is not a sign that something is going wrong. But the procedure applied by HR - both in first instance and on appeal - does show numerous shortcomings and absurdities, and also an incomprehensibly strong deviation from how the weighting criteria were interpreted and applied in previous rounds.
For example, many colleagues were awarded dramatically low scores by HR during the initial weigh-in, often making it seem as if the person concerned should be happy not to have arrived at a score that belongs to a lower job class than the one they have. It turned out that certain requirements for the position (e.g. the required diploma level), which were endorsed by the staff member and the manager in the application form, had been unilaterally changed by HR during the weighting. It goes without saying that such a message is a slap in the face of the colleagues involved, and is also completely incomprehensible when other colleagues with the same range of tasks are classified in a higher job class.
In addition, there were also several situations in which applicants had to sit in front of their computers for hours in the evening after working hours until the job reclassification committee would process their file. Then the colleagues involved were given a total of 10 minutes to explain their file. In addition, there were often no questions or even any form of response from the committee, which does not seem very interested, but mainly gives the impression that the decision whether or not to reclassify has already been made anyway.
In the appeal procedure, applicants are not even given the opportunity to be heard by the appeals committee, despite the repeated request from the trade unions. In addition, many colleagues are told after appeal that their position will not be reclassified, but then they have to wait a very long time for the report of the appeals committee to try to find out how this assessment would have been made.
All this causes a lot of justified frustration among the applicants, and leads to the fact that confidence in a fair and correct weighting of the positions is undermined. As ACOD, we also have no confidence in the working method as it is currently used. Where previously there was at least an attempt to arrive at an objective determination of the job content and to a reasoned weighting that is also consistent with other similar positions and vacancies, there are strong indications that the path of arbitrariness has now been taken. This is very harmful to the ATP and to the university as a whole. ACOD therefore calls for an urgent review and adjustment of this approach.
Management itself indicates that there are indeed a number of pain points in the new working method, and that an evaluation will be carried out to see where adjustments are needed, but only after all application and appeal files from the first round from 2024 have been fully completed. In the meantime, however, the new call for this year has started, and it is completely unclear how and when the aforementioned problems will be addressed, or what the impact will be on the processing of the new applications.
Have you received the report of the final decision on your application for reclassification, and do you have questions about its content? Do not hesitate to contact us via ACOD@UGent.be