Otago University’s Support Services Review is reaching the end of its ‘Solution Design’ phase, coming as rumours have been circulating that as many as 300 jobs will be lost once the final ‘Implementation Stage’ begins.
However, Otago University Human Resources Director Kevin Seales told Critic that, “this [figure of 300 redundancies] is incorrect and is not something that is based on any information coming from the Project.”
The review is taking a broad look at how support services are provided across the university to ensure that they are efficient and fit for purpose. According to the university the review did not set out any financial or staffing target, meaning the amount of redundancies will only become apparent once this ‘Solution Design’ phase has reached its conclusion.
The university plans to have a business case containing a number of options to be presented to the Project Steering Group in “the middle of this year.” They were keen to ensure “there is flexibility in the final outcome to enable the Steering Group to weigh up the options in light of the objectives of the project.”
The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) informed Critic that, if the university’s genuine desire was to improve the way things are done and not just to make savings by cutting staff, they should have “given an assurance that the process would not lead to job cuts, and then to genuinely engage with staff about how processes could be improved.”
This comment comes largely on the back of the disruption and disunity within the Division of Humanities as a result of the Management of Change (MoC) process the university embarked upon in July 2016 that resulted in 16 equivalent full-time staff being made redundant. Several staff members, who wished to remain anonymous, have repeatedly informed Critic that the MoC process has caused a ‘culture of fear’ to become instilled in their workplace, leading to them becoming scared to speak openly to management about the flaws in the way the process is being carried out in case they are reprimanded or are made redundant as a consequence.
Seales was quick to address these concerns, outlining that “the project is being undertaken with an unprecedented level of transparency and consultation,” specifically mentioning the fact that 74 workshops were conducted in Dunedin, Wellington and Christchurch during the ‘Research and Scoping’ phase alone; attendees to those workshops totaled as many as 1,200, and included heads of departments, general staff, academic staff, directors, and managers. Moreover, “Academic Staff and General Staff Advisory Groups have met three times during the course of the project.”
However, TEU Dunedin Organiser Shaun Scott explained that “This is not consultation - there has been no proposal put forward for unions and members to consider and respond to. Union representatives have continually pointed this out to university management. People have no idea how the information provided has (or has not) been taken into consideration.”
Seales has admitted that some attendees of the workshops were disappointed that they were not given more detail on the project, however he did not want “to give staff incomplete or partially thought-through information”.
“There has been a regular newsletter and we are also meeting with the Unions fortnightly,” Seales revealed, which will “provide them with most of the information that is being considered by the Steering Group.”
The University has explained that they are “acutely aware” that processes such as these create uncertainty and anxiety for staff, and are putting in place a number of measures to mitigate these symptoms, including increasing Occupational Health Nurse support, doubling their Employee Assistance Programmes from three to six, and providing ongoing training to help affected people respond and adapt to change.
The Support Services Review comes on top of the aforementioned Division of Humanities MoC, while more recently a number of university departments, including Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, Nutrition, Classics, Philosophy, and the College of Education are also expecting cuts after they have been placed in similarly precarious positions.
The TEU extended the blame to the National Government, who “has underfunded the tertiary education sector for too long, with restructuring and redundancies widespread. In conjunction with this chronic underfunding, we are now faced with the Education Amendment Bill which looms as a further attack on the notion of publicly funded tertiary education, threatening to fund private providers on the same basis as public providers.”