Case Study
Role defragmentation is key to enabling more effective use of talented staff
University characteristics
Undergraduate Students: | 25-30,000 |
---|---|
Postgraduate/graduate students: | 7-8000 |
Academic & Professional Staff: | 4-5000 |
UniForum involvement: | Over 5 years |
Reasons for joining UniForum
- University had invested in technology to streamline processes but benefits were not being realised
- Management needed robust fact base to understand why benefits were not being delivered
- Management wanted to collaborate with other intuitions willing to develop robust comparisons that all can learn from
Situation
- Fragmented roles meant no community to learn from, no obvious career path
- No ‘connected processes’ so local heroes critical to getting things done
- Inefficient transactional activities taking up time that could be spent on more strategic activities
- Mismatches between skills and roles and no available training because each role was unique
How UniForum helped
- UniForum frameworks applied to the data delivered insights that highlighted the levels of role fragmentation that existed
- UniForum benchmarks showed how, in comparison to other universities, inefficient transactional processes were crowding out capacity to invest in more strategic activities
- UniForum reports and briefings helped start the internal discussion about how fragmented roles may be impeding the university’s ability to develop people and provide career pathways through the institution
- Highlighted that role design was preventing the institution realising the benefits of technology investments it had made and resulting in a highly transactional focus of a skilled workforce