Corporatisation at risk of losing positive support and culture new management seek to fashion in its re-identified image
Pros
Work-life flexibility and convenient work location but this is offset with in some cases miserly desk sharing arrangements that decouple person from place and refashion it into a “neighbourhood”. Full time staff who frequent the office daily by choice or by virtue of their specific roles are expected to let go of the psychological safety of having one’s own bit of real estate - their desk - and share it with others to call to bluff and ransom the tendency of some teams and individuals to underutilise the shares office environment.
Cons
Work life balance is very much a function of the individual role and team - some areas are well supported and other areas are terrible and this lowers the rating overall. A top-down budget rationalisation takes place though seemingly without the concomitant level of deep analysts of need and value that might serve the reduce the busy-work of excessively drawn out process in supporting and transforming current service capabilities. Similarly, career opportunities are very much a function of one’s role and place in the hierarchy. Important roles can be undermined with insecure fixed term roles a restructure in 2020 was meant to reduce or eliminate that were also important alternative incentives to attract good employees at lower pay offerings than is possible in some specialist areas like cyber security. Some teams are poorly supported because of a tendency to make use of their strong commitment and goodwill that then treats this as a baseline cost to be further rationalised with individuals at the periphery of the change process and change for its own sake at the core. There is an inexorable desire to be driven by the myth of total efficiency through technological change and outsourcing that may undermine the deep capacity for the positive value, skill and culture proposition extant within the ranks of the staff it already has but may not know or acknowledge in any deep sense that is only possible though identification with one’s local group and team leadership. Lip service puts staff at the centre but in reality may be put at the periphery as a continual process of justification and alignment is carried out, quite possibly as false economy in some cases to meet kpis that provide less efficient and more costly outsourced provisions with a hollowing out of a critical mass of staff to support operations, favouring transformative activities recommended by external parties who may not have a deep level of understanding about the university’s operations, strengths and weaknesses as interpreted through the lens of a small elite management tasked with the job of leading a particular change who may only engage consultatively in s box ticking capacity more than a genuine capacity to understand the process and “customer”. Consequently process and performance can be in a constant state of flux, with just-in-time hard deadline demand-driven reality that may include painfully frustrating delays and long holding patterns to execute initiatives. Corporate services is in the process of re-casting individual and team role identities within the rubric of a one corporate service provision via a single Service Now platform to redefine existing structures, identities and individuals, though at risk of failing to recognise or appreciate the history and quality of the people, process and culture that went before in championing change with greater ownership potential.
