Pros
- Iron rice bowl - Colleagues within and across departments are generally cooperative and friendly
Cons
- Work life balance dependent on roles. Policy roles expected to work beyond hours to address "urgent" issues and deadlines. A challenge to clear time off for extra working hours in ops roles. - Unclear career progression and assessment criteria. Not good to just do your job scope well. Promotion/appraisal seemed dependent on doing beyond job scope and taking on roles that are more "visible" to senior management. - Expected to do more with less. Bosses concerned about hitting KPIs at expense of higher workload on staff. Department headcount does not commensurate well with workload, further exacerbated by staff turnover. - Staff feedback on workload seems to go unheard, especially during COVID period. - Staff development tailored towards scholars. Capability development seemed more like an afterthought when prioritising KPIs. - Lack of process innovation. Use of archaic and unwieldy back end systems and process for ops and finance which are slow and inefficient against an increasing need for data driven decision making.