New Rules of Engagement II

In our last Higher Futures Insight, we explored the new student engagement challenges and the strategic questions leadership teams need to answer as a result. But there are also related issues in leading academic and professional staff teams through the changes and their consequences. In this Higher Futures Insight, we turn to those.

Our last piece explored questions about student engagement arising from changes in student populations which are impacting institutional shape and size. These changes include: 

• the rapid growth of international post-graduate populations, as well as volatile shifts between different markets; 
• often unplanned falls in the entry tariff of undergraduate students as the domestic recruitment market has become more competitive;
• a significant growth in the proportion of commuter students; 
• long-term decline in recruitment in some subjects, notably languages and humanities, with growth concentrated in a small number of subjects including law, business and management, psychology, computing, engineering and technology. 

These changes are layered onto trends in student behaviour and expectations: the cost-of-living crisis, post-pandemic student predilections for hybrid delivery; the exponential growth of mental health demands and the accelerating impact of technology, including AI.  As a result, within not much more than five years, many staff, both academic and professional, are working with a student body which has become quite different in its shape and composition and with very different demands and expectations.

Funding challenges in undergraduate teaching and research are sector wide. They explain restructuring programmes now underway in almost two-thirds of universities – with some institutions on their second, third or even fourth round of savings, and with consequent impacts sector-wide on morale and expectations.  But different universities have experienced these developments in different ways.  Many  are looking to constrain costs across the university, others are managing changes in their business plans, re-allocating research time or revamping their portfolios, also with impacts on morale and expectations.  But the changes impact different parts of the same university differently.  There have been quite different trajectories across different professional services and different academic departments. Even those universities, mostly higher tariff, which appear from top-level data to look about the same size as they did five years ago, are starting to have a different  shape: humanities, languages and some clinical facing and life sciences programmes have either shrunk in size, or seen marked declines in undergraduate entry tariff in attempts to maintain size, while, for example, computing, data science and engineering and technology have seen demand and growth. These growth subjects are often also the ones which have seen many more post-graduate international and domestic commuter students.  The pattern is of rapid growth and diversification in some parts of the university, consolidation and retrenchment in others. There are obvious business planning consequences in these different trajectories: finding [or losing] space, hiring [or reducing] staff numbers.  Moreover, the growth/decline pattern is set against stringent searches for efficiencies, also sometimes differentially across the university. Some universities are using restructuring not only to resize but also to reshape.

These changes on their own would in many sectors lead to a significant strategic shift in workforce composition, delivery models and ways of working creating the need for greater flexibility, lower costs and some new job types. But they have also coincided with, and are linked to other changes, such as expectations in terms of patterns of work, job roles, productivity, and emergence of new digital technologies. Some changes are about alternative employment models, as universities seek to navigate routes to lower cost or more flexible employment through use of subsidiary vehicles, changes in terms and conditions and new modes of delivery (shorter courses, wholly online). 

As with the questions institutions face on student engagement, these challenges come after a long period of difficulties.  Universities saw almost continuous industrial action over pay, pensions and workload between 2017 and 2023. They had to pivot to remote operation during the global pandemic of 2020-2022.They are re-appraising their approaches to teaching, administration and assessment in the face of profound technology change: the launch of ChatGPT4.o in late 2023 had a remarkable impact across the sector, crystallising questions about the future of core activities.

Engaging staff productively against this background would be a challenge for any leadership team, however experienced, and the issues are both tactical and strategic. There is the short-term challenge of leading staff through a period of disruptive and destabilising change as universities adjust their operating models to the economic realities of changing size and shape. But there is also the longer-term challenge about articulating the relationship between present-day funding questions, institutional mission and positioning, and the ways in which technological change and shifting expectations are reframing the very nature of higher education.  

Universities have often struggled to get the relationship right between operational questions, educational futures and staff engagement. As they lead staff through change, there are some key questions which university leadership needs to be able to answer:

• Is there a clear and shared view of future institutional mission, identity and shape? 

Change is (almost) always difficult and (almost) always generates profound emotions.  Keeping institutions culturally healthy in the process of difficult change requires time, attention to detail and a compelling narrative of the future. In difficult times, it’s easy to focus on short-term, often financially-led questions, in staff communications and engagement. Inevitably, they loom large in everyone’s mind.  But short term, tactical decisions should always be connected to a longer-term vision about an organisation’s mission and its route to realising that sustainably.  By the same token, a focus on mission and high level goals needs to take account of the immediate steps necessary to prepare the organisation for long-term success. Effective engagement needs to keep both in view.

• How inclusive are communications and engagement plans?

Universities have well-established processes for staff engagement: joint negotiating committees, Senates, Academic Boards, departmental meetings, ‘town halls’, and, of course (often-widely-ignored) all-staff emails or videos. But we know that these can be very good ways of engaging the already engaged. It’s much more difficult, but crucial, to engage staff beyond the normal channels and to work hard at reaching the more difficult to reach staff – often the staff whose mood and morale will make the difference between success and failure. Engaging all staff is more important than ever, prioritising open communication and staff involvement.

• Is there a strategic view of future workforce requirements and expectations?

Almost all institutions are reshaping and resizing their workforce as operating models change.  Success will depend on clear thinking about future size and shape, data-driven, underpinned by a clear and compelling employment offer, which addresses the needs and expectations of the future as well as being financially sustainable. Leaders need to plan strategically for new job roles that align with technology advances, evolving student needs and changes in higher education funding and delivery.

• Is there a leadership and management culture which can sustain the university through difficult change?

In times of difficulty, it’s too easy for leadership to hunker down rather than to focus attention and effort on empowering the next generation of leaders who, in almost all cases, will be those who need to communicate and embed change. Universities need to enhance the capabilities of leadership across the organisation, with resilience and agility and effective succession planning as part of continuous learning.

• How effectively is a digital strategy built into staff engagement?

The future will be increasingly digitally enabled. Universities not only need digital strategies but also a route to implement them through effective engagement. These must consider how to bring academic and professional services staff up to the level of our students’ use of AI tools. The HEPI/Kortext 2025 undergraduate survey demonstrates just how far and how fast undergraduates are racing ahead. It is not enough to depend on relatively few digital ‘champions’: staff must all be supported to become digitally literate and, if possible, digitally fluent. Universities need digital strategies which take an objective view of staff capabilities to identify digital skills, gaps and preferences and prioritise strong executive level leadership.