Anyone work in university admin / professional services?

[Lurkscroller]

I have been in a regulatory role in a university for the past few years and it is hell on earth. Insane workload, I reckon mine has quadrupled since I started. Just had a few days off and dreading going back. When I raise issues with my boss the answer is always "just do what you can". Result? Total chaos, work piling up, legal implications that create even more work, endless angry, ghreatening emails...anyone else in the same boat? I am working up to leave but stuggling to even find the energy I'm so burnt out!

I’m afraid it’s pretty much the norm in HE now. Not helped by a few slackers then taking advantage to go off sick with work-related stress when they weren’t really doing much in the first place.

It’s fairly hideous isn’t it at the moment.
I have run out of fucks to give though so although fairly senior I am doing the bare minimum.

We were absolutely shafted last year in a merger and treated so badly so I’m afraid all goodwill evaporated. It piles up and I don’t care.

We have to work with research services, mostly contracts and legal but also grants, sometimes HR. We work with maybe 15 UK universities regularly.

they are all in absolute shambles. For every sensible person trying to do the right thing there are four incompetent lazy idiots. Outright aggression shown by some, almost always to cover their own mistakes.

Everyone knows it. Funders, government, the senior levels of the universities. Not sure how to turn it round, but the decline over the last five years or so is noticeable.

I am trying to practice giving no fucks but it's so demoralising. On a personal level, but also in terms of thinking about the state of universities more generally.

I work regularly with outside legal firms brought in to handle some of the problems generated by staff shortages and crazy decision making, and I am embarrassed by what I often have to present them with or ask them to defend...

I was in a role very similar to yours, but changed sector in the past few years. It has been enlightening what counts as “hard work” in other sectors. I no longer dread going into work after a break - when working at home I would not going into the study when I wasn’t working as it was so triggering.

Oh yes I know what you mean. But I have some health issues and have just divorced so my threshold is low! It’s not my priority at the moment. I can retire (from this job-not completely) in 9 years so I have my eye on hanging on until then (or hopefully getting paid off in closer to 7). I’ve done 24 years in HE so far and I know I can’t hack it to 68, want to go at 57.

That's how i feel...even looking at my laptop gives me the shivers on a day off. Do you mind me asking what sector you work in now?

You’re not at Nottingham are you!? They’re laying off so may people, to be fair most have opted/taken redundancy, but there are holes everywhere and it’s a fucking omnishambles!

@AlphabetBirdRKE and our whole team is on the verge of going off with stress. The lack of strategy from the management is a huge factor. They need to decide what we should focus on but apparently everything is urgent and essential.

I’m curious to see which ball I drop and how much lost “income” that equates to.

Yes, I can well believe that @RandomMess . It must be incredibly stressful and I can imagine that even running you can’t go forwards - only backwards a bit less quickly!

High turnover and absence is one of the big drivers for the problems we see - projects get started by one person, passed on more than once, then eventually outsourced to external legal who stay from scratch again. The cost per project must be huge given the time spent by multiple people.

Our place want to “grow research” but seem in denial that 1. Research costs money as funding very rarely covers direct costs let alone overheads 2. They don’t want to invest in giving academics time to do research 3. We don’t have systems in place to grow everything is so manual to administer 4. The academic departments don’t have any admin.

🤷🏽‍♀️

Oh 5. We win funding but they don’t want to spend the money to deliver it and if you don’t spend the money you can’t recovery the cost as “income” from the funder 😖

Have you thought about leaving OP and leveraging your substantial transferrable skills and expertise into a different sector?

I left HE nearly two years ago. I was an academic (so arguably even fewer transferrable skills than you likely have!) and I'm now doing something completely different in a different sector and it has been utterly eye opening. As in, I have line management for the first time in my life... the atmosphere isn't toxic/ cynical... there's a sense of shared purpose and goal... the place isn't full of senior managers inflicting batshit pointless 'initiatives' on staff just so they can demonstrate they've 'managed change' before moving on elsewhere half way through the project... and so on...

I was terrified to leave HE as I thought I'd never work again and that I'd really miss the 'freedom'. But I'm so glad I got out. I knew it was a dysfunctional space when I worked in it (for 20 years), but I didn't realise to what extent until I started working somewhere else.

I worked in academia in the 90s and retired just as things were beginning to decline. Fortunately I hit pension age so I had other income. I became self employed and now do private tutoring. So I see the fuck ups in Unis at a distance.

In my previous job I was in local government and as the funding dried up the work increased. I learned to just work my hours and let it pile up. The service users complained but that was not my problem. I had no wish to be the most hard working employee in the graveyard.

Same where I am. I don’t have long before I retire fortunately. But it’s got worse and worse. Most of it seems to have stemmed from top management having endless, incredibly expensive, time-wasting schemes for “reform” and “reinvention” and “restructuring” which in every single case has made things worse for the majority of staff. Except the top management themselves, who aren’t affected by the mess they make. In all parts of professional services there are fewer staff doing more work, within a nonsensical structure that’s impossible to navigate.
DC is at another uni and they’re doing the same. When students comment on how they’re being affected by the professional services and admin being decimated, you know it’s bad.
I wouldn’t recommend a career in HE these days in any role.

Yep. We had redundancies last year and now they are asking why performance is down... 🤨

Same. It's such a shitshow and a shame. Only about 10 years ago I was still firmly in the 'I can never imagine myself doing anything else' and really thought I had the dream job - getting to read, write and talk about my favourite thing for a living. Sad how that steadily, drip-drip eroded in a decade to what it was by the time I left.

I left HE 3 years ago, it was awful then. I was coming home exhausted and really not enjoying the job anymore so many extra responsibilities for no extra money and so little respect or acknowledgement of how important the role I did was (PA) I was just 'admin'.

I couldn't imagine doing anything other than working in HE at the time, thought I'd stay there until I retire.

I now work in the private sector and whilst it's stressful at times, I'm actually respected and acknowledged as being an important part of the team.

I’m in an academic/middle management role and it’s hell on earth at the moment.

Staffing wise we’ve been cut to the bone in both academic and professional services. There just aren’t enough people to get the work done.
Everything is ‘urgent’ but there’s not enough time to deal with all the urgent tasks.
Instead of stopping and thinking strategically about what we should do we implement it’s a scattergun approach and everything needs doing by yesterday.

It’s so stressful and I’m not sure how long we can keep working like this.

@HighLadyofTheNightCourt this exactly. We have people off on long term sick leave due to stress and it’s like they are just pretending it’s not happening and that they will back. Meanwhile the rest of us are all closer to going off sick ourselves.