Page 7 - AHEIA Annual Report

PRINCIPAL ACTIVITIES
The Australian Higher Education Workforce of the Future Report was published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and presented to the Vice-Chancellors of all Australian universities, in January 2016. As outlined in last year's annual report, the Report was commissioned by the Association in conjunction with the Deputy Vice-Chancellors Corporate group of Universities Australia in late 2015, and was awarded to PwC through an open tendering process.
The Report put the spotlight on how to enable Australian universities to compete in a globally competitive market, looking at the university environment as a ected by environmental change drivers over the next 10-15 years. The Report concluded that major changes to the higher education workforce are needed, and set out a roadmap for the implementation of necessary changes.
KEY FINDINGS OF THE REPORT INCLUDED:
1. The urgent need for change and di erentiation - universities need to act now to stay competitive, and for the sector as a whole to remain globally competitive.
2. The diversity of universities will increase in the future. Their di erentiation will be strongly in uenced by how they choose to respond to external drivers of change.
The principal claims made by the NTEU include a claim which e ectively provides for overtime payments for academic
sta who work more than 40 hours per week; the ability for academic sta who do not have access to an internal promotion process to apply to FWC for reclassi cation; automatic conversion of casual professional/general sta to continuing status after 6 months; an ICT allowance for academic and general sta who work from home; and signi cant payments to casual academic sta for induction and maintaining professional discipline currency. These claims are all being strongly contested. The claims being pursued by the Association are: an extra category of permitted types of xed-term employment; a reduction in length of the academic redundancy notice period which applies to the vast majority of universities, but not to other employers covered by the award; and removal of the severance payments that apply on expiry of some xed-term contracts.
The Association’s annual membership survey was distributed
in August and was completed by over 400 respondents. The results were very pleasing, with 360 respondents indicating that they were either satis ed of very satis ed with the services they received from the Association, and only two providing a negative response.
OVERALL, HOW SATISFIED WERE YOU WITH THE SERVICES YOU RECEIVED FROM AHEIA?
30% VERY SATISFIED
13% NEUTRAL
3. Universities need to adopt business models that t their future needs - there is no ‘one size ts all’ approach that needs to be taken.
4. All universities will need a exible, agile workforce in
the future. Whilst many universities have made recent investments in workforce reform, change is needed to develop a workforce that is su ciently exible, specialised and self-renewing to be properly responsive to changing stakeholder expectations.
The Report identi ed a range of workplace reforms that universities will need to consider implementing to better align their workforces to strategic priorities, and a need to consider the design and skill requirements of existing and new job roles with a view to introducing exibility that is responsive to employer and student demands.
0% DISSATISFIED OR VERY DISSATISFIED
56% SATISFIED
The Report operated as a backdrop to university enterprise bargaining negotiations in Western Australia and elsewhere across the higher education sector, as mentioned elsewhere in this Annual Report.
The two Modern Awards covering the majority of university sta , the Higher Education Industry Academic Sta Award 2010 and the Higher Education Industry General Sta Award 2010, were the subject of Fair Work Commission Full Bench 4-yearly review proceedings during 2016. Those proceedings were incomplete at year-end, with nal submissions to be led in early 2017 and a Full Bench decision not expected before the middle of the year.
AHEIA Annual Report 2016 7