Professionalisation is not a dirty word: Reforming workforce management practices in higher education

Facing pressure from every direction, Australian universities are pulling out all the stops to ensure a sustainable future. Among the most pressing and intractable issues remains the sector’s Achilles heel: workforce management.

Over the past few years, casualisation, underpayments, temporary employment issues, and a questionable employee value proposition have all highlighted that universities have a way to go to modernise their workforce management practices. While action is being taken on casualisation and underpayments, universities across the sector have not consistently prepared for other new and emerging workforce challenges.

Universities can no longer differentiate themselves with reference to their collegial culture or their promise, not consistently delivered, of work-life balance. All workplaces in all sectors are focused on building respectful and employee-centred ways of working and, since the pandemic, most are able to offer flexibility in work patterns. The importance of employee wellbeing is similarly gaining traction. Universities have long told themselves that they’re great places to work, but now drag behind other sectors. The mining, energy, defence, and public sectors, among others, are all looking to enhance the employee experience to attract and retain diverse talent pools, and universities are competing with these sectors for talent.

University workforce management must now be strategic, long term, and laser-focused on an EVP that goes beyond work-life balance to one that motivates and develops all its people. It’s time for Chief People Officers (CPOs) to be disciplined, determined, and daring.

A culture of collegiality, inconsistent people data, and little to no investment in building capability has hamstrung universities’ workforce management.

Collegiality, while often regarded as a cornerstone of traditional academic culture, is not necessarily aligned with the demands of modern people strategies. Contemporary institutions are increasingly focused on measurable performance metrics, innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration, which often require structured leadership and accountability rather than the informal, consensus-driven dynamics associated with collegiality. Moreover, the competitive landscape of higher education emphasises agility and adaptability, qualities that can be stifled by rigid adherence to collegial decision-making processes.

Data issues compound these problems. It’s almost impossible to manage a workforce you don’t understand or can’t see. Today, the only way universities can do this is with robust people data and insights. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resource management system (HRMS) implementations across the sector remain inconsistent and patchy and are yet to fulfill their potential. Poor workforce data structures leave universities with a simple transactional view of their people, reduced to employment record data and historical performance information. This view keeps managers and business partners in a reactive and issue-based performance management cycle. When considered against modern workforce management practices, which focus on employee career development and wellbeing, universities are left with a reductive employer-employee relationship.

Workforce management is not solely the responsibility of university HR professionals. It is a leadership function requiring active engagement from academic and administrative leaders, too. Universities must equip their leaders with the tools, training, and authority to manage and develop teams effectively, fostering a culture of continuous learning and aligning individual goals with institutional objectives. While academic staff often benefit from clear development pathways, the professional and emerging third workforce, which bridges academic and corporate roles, is often neglected. By addressing this gap, universities can build a more dynamic, responsive workforce where people management is a shared responsibility.

Universities now clearly lag behind the public and other sectors, which have focused on uplifting leadership capability and professionalising careers that transcend sectors, such as in IT, HR, and finance. Universities would do well to respect their professional staff with development and the acquisition of new skills, before those staff members decide to decamp to sectors with more progressive people development policies.

Nous is currently surveying university Chief Operating Officers around the world to understand what’s at the top of their priority lists. When it comes to workforce management, our early insights show that university COOs are nervous about capability shortages, particularly in change management, digital transformation, data analytics, and emerging technologies like AI. They want responsive systems and processes to put data driven workforce insights into the hands of people leaders. They are willing to explore new workforce models that recognise the changing capability profile of university professionals and direct focus to strategic capabilities.

CPOs have a clear imperative to modernise their function, upskill their people leaders, and reimagine their own workforce models. By building a resilient, dynamic, and capable people and culture workforce through strategic appointments, robust systems management, and a focus on leadership and people development, CPO’s can finally be the strategic enabling function universities need them to be.

In universities, getting your People and Culture function in order can be an endurance sport, requiring focus and discipline to stay the course and realise the investment. But there is no alternative: the People and Culture function must be a credible centre of expertise for modern workforce management. We know many CPOs have made strategic appointments to talent acquisition, workforce management, and organisational development. These roles must be reinforced with robust people systems, quality data and core people processes that enable employees. If CPOs don’t have robust establishment data, they must move now. They need to run recruitment and onboarding processes to embody a new people-focused EVP and attract and retain the right talent.

With this in place, it is time to shift away from reactive performance management to proactive career development. It is time to double-down on your employee service environment. If CPOs aren’t yet working with their enterprise service management platform, they need to start. Knowing where your university has remaining workplace legislation risk, and what you are doing to mitigate, it is similarly non-negotiable.

The People and Culture function can’t add value if people leaders across the university still need their human resources business partners (HRBPs) to mediate every issue. People and Culture teams need to put the right employee data in people leaders’ hands and set the expectations and accountabilities for how they lead their workforces. With high-quality workforce data readily available to leaders, they will be better equipped to manage to the future rather than react to the past. Workforce dashboards providing insights on capabilities, performance, development, and wellbeing can nudge leaders towards strategic workforce management.

Universities must place renewed value on the very concept of leadership as a driver and enabler of mission. Leader development at all levels must be future-focused and employee-centric, emphasising wellbeing and professional growth and empowering leaders to foster innovative and collaborative cultures, rather than collegiate ones. Leaders who prioritise the needs and aspirations of their staff, in balance with those of the university, are better equipped to inspire and motivate their teams, leading to higher engagement and productivity, and ultimately a high-performing university.

Many universities experienced creeping workforce costs in the wake of the pandemic, with serious financial implications. Intentional workforce shaping, not accidental workforce creep, will be a crucial component of any attempt to right and steady the ship.

Streamlining and simplifying job design and architecture will create clear roles aligned to strategic goals. This simplification will enable performance development and achievement. Offering clear and compelling development pathways for both academic and professional staff ensures that employees see a future within the organisation, too, which helps retain talent and motivates staff to engage in ongoing professional growth. Aligning workforce composition with university goals and objectives, in the form of a modern strategic workforce architecture, requires bold, potentially provocative CPO leadership.

Too often we can feel ourselves hamstrung by traditional modes of working. We can also feel that we’re being waylaid by the day-to-day challenges of running a university. But despite such challenges – indeed, because of them – those who wish to remain competitive must move, provoke, and build anew. This may seem intimidating, but it is also necessary and exciting – an imperative, to be sure, but also an opportunity. University CPOs, the time for bold action is now.

Get in touch to discuss how your university can embrace the opportunities inherent in higher education's new reality.

Connect with Megan Huisman and Krisztina Barnett on LinkedIn.