The Response - UWA Staff - The University of Western Australia

‘The trick is not management of the activity; the real trick is to harvest the intellectual activity and not to harness it.
This requires a light hand of management and not an accounting and auditing culture.’
Proposal 13: That the University initiate a review of its academic and administrative cost structure, and
use the information on costs in a transparent way to guide future resource allocation.
‘I was very pleased to hear you speak recently about the concept of creating a new budget structure that reduces
some of the unproductive competition between Schools.’
‘…our previous process for making decisions on allocation of major capital funds lacked transparency, rigour and
sound commercial advice. I am encouraged by your approach to date and will endeavour to ensure the right
governance processes are floated to the senior executive group to protect the organisation and individuals for
future projects.’
Proposal 14: That the University use data from the UniForum benchmarking survey of service activities
and quality to review the performance of our administrative and professional service, and to implement
change and improvement where appropriate.
‘In Uniforum it will be very interesting to see the level of resources dedicated to teaching support. I suspect it is
quite low.’
‘I think Uniforum will be an interesting tool for making macro level observations, and that with the supporting
deeper dives into specific areas it will be able to identify tangible opportunities for service delivery improvement
and efficiency….It is already obvious that some staff are being paid a lot more than is justified on the basis of their
contribution, while some others are doing a lot of unpaid work to try and keep the holes in the dam at bay. Our
system of promotion, recognition of performance and career goal setting is out of step with modern practice and
the private sector.’
‘When I have heard you speak in the past, you have always focused on both the academic and professional staff
and how jointly, these two communities worked together to bring about positive futures. I feel however that in
the Futures paper, the role of professional staff in helping navigate the way forward seems missing, aside from
proposals 13 & 14 which to me are more along the lines of a review of cost and activity. I really think a proposal
needs to be added to recognize the role of professional staff in crystallizing the UWA Future.’
‘I believe that there is too much “Management” (control) at UWA and not enough “Leadership” (empowerment).
Two comments from the last HR review might help to illustrate this: “HR is a bureaucracy peopled by wonderful
people”, and “HR staff want to soar like Eagles but their feet are set in concrete”.
Some staff… are obviously overworked but perhaps are not delegating or unable to delegate because of rules
imposed upon them or out of date processes.
Some changes are very difficult to implement for want of sponsorship at higher levels. An example is staff
provisioning (providing new staff with ID and IT access). A fundamental change to this using technology was
costed at $50k, with an anticipated annual saving of $170k+, but was not resourced despite the fact that the idea
was given 1st prize in a business improvement initiative. That was five years ago; the situation has not changed
but the problem still exists.’
21 | www.uwa.edu.au