The higher education sector is dealing with severe financial challenges and while it was hoped a new government might offer additional funding, maybe even bailouts, this does not seem to be the case with the new education minister, Bridget Phillipson, making it clear that “Universities should put their own finances before looking for help from the taxpayer.”
Clearly, we have not heard the last of this with so many universities at risk and a number are understood to be in ‘serious peril’, according to the Sunday Times.
As a result, student support departments are struggling. We know because we speak with them. A lot. But what do the headlines really mean for staff members day-to-day? And their wellbeing? And do senior management truly understand what is happening on their campuses?
These are the questions we set out to answer in our latest mini-report, which shares the findings of a short survey we asked staff working in university student services to complete.
It’s easier to keep a student than recruit a new one… but only if staff can support them
Rather than perceiving student services teams as a ‘cost centre’, hard-working professional staff should be seen as what they are: essential to the university’s recruitment and retention strategic objectives – akin to customer success in the corporate space.
Just like in the corporate space, they should have the best and most effective tools to save time and money on things like admin, so their working hours can be more effectively deployed to offer support to students who need it most.
After all, it’s easier to keep a student than recruit a new one. But teams need to feel supported, empowered and psychologically safe in order to do this.
As one respondent said: “We are your anchors within HE. Our priority is opening all doors to supporting students to stay, progress and flourish…We have endless experience and need to shout about what we do more but we’re always wondering when we’ll go through another round of redundancies. It’s hard not to just get out but we’re in it for the long haul as we’re absolutely needed!”
Let’s take a closer look at a couple of the report’s headline findings…
65% of staff surveyed are considering leaving the sector due to workload, stress or mental health
Staff are on the move. Or at least many of them indicate they would like to be. The two most common issues raised by those who say they are considering leaving are ‘workload’ and ‘resource’.
In many cases, universities are still using antiquated, human-based systems when smart technologies can be deployed. The report gives some examples of how exactly technology can help.
Not only are staff up and leaving, but they’re also having to take time off due to mental health.
1 in 2 (54%) have taken time/been signed off due to mental health in the last 12 months
Staff being signed off is not only a sign of burnout, mental health distress and all the consequences of that. It is also expensive.
All campuses are different but some back-of-a-napkin calculations make for sobering reading; assuming teams of 10 where 5 people are signed off for four weeks each year, the sector is losing £3,200,000 each year to these sign-offs alone.
It’s a truism of life that trying to go cheap is often much more expensive. Investing in tools and solutions that can remove some of the burden on staff’s shoulders will pay off even in the short term, even if it feels as though there is some front-loading of costs.
Where to from here?
As the report says, tremendous challenges exist for institutions that can’t afford to pay larger salaries or hire more staff to resolve some of these matters.
But there is also no doubt that if support staff have the right tools then much capacity can be added without increasing headcount.
Our goal at Blackbullion is to reduce the administrative burden as much as possible and release overworked student services from antiquated processes. Our ultimate goal is to save you time and money while changing students’ lives.
We know from our partners at more than 50 UK universities that managing all funds in an end-to-end single platform is a relief. But it’s even more than this – staff using our Funds Management System (FMS) reported a 25% reduction in finance and administration costs, while saying it was 2-4x faster to process funds.
Blackbullion featured on our FinTech 50 ranking in late 2023
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