Nous partnered with a top-ranking Australian university to transform its support services in order to drive greater collaboration and improve efficiencies.
As the higher education sector became more competitive and the university’s ambitions grew, the university needed to improve the efficiency of non-academic functions and drive greater collaboration between academic and professional staff. It sought to do this without the high costs, disruption and pain that other universities have faced in similar programs.
Nous supported the vice-chancellor, chief operating officer and executive team over 18 months. We supported 10 project teams of academic and professional staff to identify and implement efficiency opportunities across all non-academic functions and gradually reduce headcount through attrition and increased staff mobility.
We provided:
New reporting mechanisms were created to keep all streams accountable for achieving process improvements and workforce reductions.
Nous’ co-creation and collaborative approach was highly successful in creating strong client ownership of recommendations.
After 12 months the university achieved over $30 million in annual savings (net of project costs) since the transformation. These savings have been maintained. The university also reported demonstrable improvement in collaboration and whole-of-university perspective at the executive level.
