Professional Services/Support Department people – feeling the squeeze?

[sortaottery]

Is this something you recognise from your experience?

I started working in low-level roles in university professional service departments about eleven years ago. I've moved through several different areas at different institutions, and am now in a low-level but permanent job at a low-tariff uni.

In that time, it's seemed as if the workplaces have gone from being fairly relaxed environments with money to spend on staff training and development (which encouraged me to stay in HE) to pressure cookers, where many of the more experienced staff have retired or left, and everyone is fighting fires all the time.

The financial pressure results in managers/senior staff saying 'yes' to things without calculating the impact on the employees trying to hold things together – perhaps not feeling 'no' is ever an option, because of turnover. Every university, it seems, wants to increase the number of students without increasing the wage bill.

Some staff don't even seem to realise this is happening – like the myth of frogs in boiling water, not noticing the problem until too late. They get stressed and angry, but complain about people, not about the wider structure and pressures.

I know the places I've worked in haven't always been directly comparable. They've ranged from the grand and prestigious to the small and concrete. Plus when I started I was in my twenties, a lot more hopeful, and it was the pre-Brexit, pre-Trump era still. But I left the office at 8pm tonight, and I'd just really like to know what other digital quasi-colleagues impressions are.

If you still work in a laid-back idyll, let me know where it is so I can apply for a job there.

PS services here. Our team has been cut to the bone and beyond. We used to have 25 staff covering 3 faculties. We now have 15 ( in theory). There is no way to cover any staff absence in the way we used to. We’re running very hard just to keep still (probably going backwards). In my 50s so just hanging on until 60 when I’m running for the hills. I’ve been in higher education for 36 years and it breaks my heart seeing what it’s become.

All these posts resonate deeply. I run a PS Team which has been cut to the bone, yet we are still expected to provide the same level of service and there is no consideration- despite repeated communication - of the person-power required to make systems work and talk to each other. We're all exhausted; we're working long hours of unpaid overtime, not taking - or working through - annual leave and hardly a day goes by without a team member in tears due to the pressure. And on top of this we are getting constant criticism about not doing x/y/z or things happening slowly, from academic staff, or worse, questioning why we exist at all.

I'm currently in debate with another PS Manager who wants to shift a large block of work from her team to mine due to staffing shortages and feeling mine is the next best fit. I just can't take it on but the only other option is pushing it to academics which neither of us agree with.

I have never known it so bad. I don't want to leave but stayingmakes me feel ill. I suspect i'll be in the firing line for redundancy soon anyway. Unfortunately I don't hold the type of role that has transferable skills. My job only really makes sense in the HE sector so any change - forced or otherwise- will likely mean a considerable drop of status and finances into some kind of office junior position. And my family will likely lose their home. I can, and have been applying for management/leadership/strategy positions outside HE but the problem is that the market is saturated and there are plenty folk who demonstrate the skills needed AND a background of whatever sector- and that's where I lack.

We'll be finding out about compulsory redundancies in the next few weeks and i've never been so scared. For me it's not just about the loss of earnings but genuinely about identity. I've been in HE for nearly 20 years. I love the sector and want to see it recover. Academics on this thread have noted that their identity is bound up in their job and it's the same for me - my professional life has been built around this sector and I don't want to be anywhere else.

I'm fairly new to PS and have already been through 2 restructures.

The divide between academics and PS at my uni in general is high. Personally, I have a great relationship with most of the academics I need to contact regularly. I just wish everyone could understand that we're on the same team and that things could be... not easier but more pleasant if we acted like that.

Our department has been short staffed for a while and as there is a recruitment freeze, we just have to get on with it. I think my colleagues from my former and current departments understand that things are hard, we just wish that the blame for everything that goes wrong isn't laid squarely at our feet.

Apparently all that's needed is a change of working method and when I point out the very real problems with numbers and facts, it's ignored.

The leadership team take absolutely no responsibility or accountability. I'm sure there is plenty going on I have no idea about, but seeing how easily they are willing to throw people under the bus, I have had enough so I'm moving to a different department within the uni after some self study.

I'm not naive enough to think it's going to be much better, in fact, one of the posts here have flagged up a problem I'm likely to have, but at least I'll be able to get paid a bit more and during the interview stage the leadership appeared to be honest about the shortcomings of the department which was very refreshing.

The divide between academics and PS at my uni in general is high. Personally, I have a great relationship with most of the academics I need to contact regularly. I just wish everyone could understand that we're on the same team and that things could be... not easier but more pleasant if we acted like that.

I think the division between academics and PS staff is about more senior PS staff who are not at the coal face of teaching and dealing with students, as most academic staff do. I know how much work my student-facing PS colleagues do, but I find the upper management PS staff are pretty ignorant of the pressures we both - academic & PS staff - face day to day teaching. And research - although a lot of PS staff have little understanding of research, which is frustrating, but understandable, as it's pretty invisible to most of them.

At my place, we are having our entire academic year structure radically restructured - by a so-called "education expert" & team who I suspect have not taught an undergraduate seminar in the last 20 years - if ever. As a very experienced academic, I have pretty much contempt for that.

But not for my PS colleagues who manage all the arrangements for teaching & deal with undergrads every day, and who - along with us academics - will be getting the flak for the disaster that the new teaching/term arrangements will be ...

Thanks @fluffythecat1 I do get DLA for her and work know she is disabled they just don't care! When she was suicidal a year ago they gave me one day of leave to deal with it. I genuinely hate them

prefacing this - i apologise in advance for the rant, because i m pissed off. It s not personal.

The them v us thing is toxic - however, in my place, our PS colleague have a hard 9 to 5 monday friday line (including senior PS). Which is lovely both in theory and practice - but does not apply to academics, because in the current model we are running labs as small corporations under the umbrella of the University, and need to "resource" these without manpower (hiring freezes, slow HR, talent leaving).

At the WE, i sort freezers that break down in the lab, do pastoral support for my students, do saturday open days, help at the science fairs and public exchange activities, travel to conferences which i need to be at for CPD and my professional registration (because now they all start on a sunday - what a great idea), as well as write my grants and papers (because, let s face it, the week is never enough when the rejection rate is stratospheric) plus any service work which is not to be carried out in work hours (journal reviewing and editing, grant panel work, learnt society trustee work). We also have no budget for any conferences so i need to pay for these out of my own pocket or get invited to talk - a constant hustle.

During my holidays, i must maintain contact with my msc students who are carrying out their dissertation - "only a brief weekly check in" nevermind the fact that i have 8 of these.

On tuesday, i have my appraisal where i ll have to explain why i m not meeting my research income or PGR enrollement KPI this year (RG benchmarks) whilst trying to explain that running a lab in this climate is pretty much impossible. I ll have to also give account about how i am positioning myself as the global leader the uni expects me to be (mostly through my external work that is carried out out of hours).

so when i m told "we re all in the same boat" i think - maybe, yes, in some ways. But in a lot of other ways, i know that when the shit hits the fan at the WE or in the evening... i m on my own.

Sorry for derailing the thread and for being bitter and tired. It might be my uni which is particularly shit.

I genuinely feel for you and for academics collectively, @Marasme . Totally see why you feel that way, even if ps staff aren't the ones causing these conditions.

thanks @bibliomania - i am grateful to my few PS colleagues who see the system for what it is, and also recognise that the out of hours work is ramping up to unsustainable levels (and sometimes try to push back). And i try to remember that those who are totally unsympathetic either belong to out of touch higher management PS, or belong to the army of PS staff hired on the cheap, with little to no training, who are thrown at the deep end and have no clue of what academics actually do (or who they are).

So sorry to hear this. I’m a PhD researcher at one university and a Learning Support Assistant in another. In my LSA role the university is very supportive of my role as a carer and it hasn’t really come up in the other, however I would hope that given the focus on inclusivity and wellbeing in HE that you should very much be offered time off and support under those circumstances.

I totally get your frustration @Marasme and you're right, when things go wrong, you're left to deal with it.

One of my suggestions when I joined my new team was that in one of the (pointless) meetings, we got an overview of a typical week of our lecturers. That way we could all understand what we each other do so we can support properly.
I was told it wasn't necessary.

@ParmaVioletTea these "experts" are something else aren't they?
Our restructure decided to centralise PS which meant I was pulled off the programme I was working on and put in a different department. I kept asking who was going to monitor the things I used to, the programme lead ended up doing it because we couldn't get a straight answer.

When the PL left, no-one took over.
It's now been realised that some students may fail because of lack of monitoring and the blame is being passed around like a hot potato because no-one wants to admit it was a result of the restructure.

Very amused at the idea that inclusivity and wellbeing are prioritised in HE

Well, they are for the students, and for a couple of 'woke' colleagues, but the resyt of us have to suck it up. I have a stainless steel stiff upper lip, and the resilience of a battleship, but there are times when it's been very bad. Being told by HR that as a Head of Department (60 hour+ per week workload) I could have an amenuensis for one afternoon a week when I lost the use of my dominant arm for 18 months was a pretty low point ... that university lost me & several research grants which went with me.

@fluffythecat1 there is a lot of talk about inclusion and wellness but really it's just talk. When there is a need to actually do something to help then all that kindness vanishes.

I'm so sorry. I saw some mad stuff in my last role, but only one other management decision anywhere near being so dumb and cruel.