Personnel management in UK universities
| Published date | 01 August 2001 |
| Pages | 404-420 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480110393295 |
| Date | 01 August 2001 |
| Author | Michael P. Jackson |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
30,4
404
Personnel Review,
Vol. 30 No. 4, 2001, pp. 404-420.
#MCB University Press, 0048-3486
Received June 1999
Revised January 2000
Accepted April 2000
Personnel management
in UK universities
Michael P. Jackson
University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
Keywords Personnel management, Personnel departments, Universities, United Kingdom
Abstract Until recently UK universities have paid little attention to managing the personnel
function. However, matters changed in the 1980s, and surveys at the beginning of the 1990s
suggested that all institutions had established personnel departments. Discusses research recently
completed in 14 universities. Finds that there is still considerable variation in the conduct of the
personnel function, and that the boundaries of the personnel department and the roles played by
personnel differ from one institution to the next. Suggests that much more thought remains to be
given to the way that responsibility for human resource functions is devolved to heads of
departments. Further, it suggests that while greater recognition may have been given to the
importance of the human resource function within universities (and that it may be seen to have a
more important role in strategic planning) this has not led necessarily to an increasing role for the
personnel department as such.
Introduction
Universities typically spend around 60 per cent of their income on staffing yet
until recently paid little attention to the management of those staff or to the
personnel management function. In part this was because what were seen as
the key staff, the academic staff, were viewed as professionals operating
through a collegiate system. Mackie (1990, p. 56) argues that as a result until
the early 1970s ``the personnel administration of staff was carried out mainly
by other administrators as part of their other duties''. Matters only started to
change with the increasing unionisation of staff and the legal complexities
thrown up by the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. However, even then the
personnel staff appointed frequently concentrated their attention on non-
academic staff. ``Academic staff were judged at that time to be largely above the
personnel fray, and many Universities opted to recruit personnel officers with
responsibilities only for non-teaching staff'' (Mackie, 1990, p. 56).
Gradually over the following decade the position changed. The main
representative body for academic staff, the Association of University Teachers,
moved from being viewed as a professional association to a trade union and the
debates over the terms of employment of teaching staff brought concern and
conflict. The role of personnel staff started to widen, though the personnel
function itself was still underdeveloped compared to the private sector, and
even compared to much of the public sector. Keep and Sisson, in their review of
personnel management in universities in the 1980s argued that many
institutions had little that could be described as a personnel function for
academic and academic related staff and suggested that at best they had ``a
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
Editor's note: Michael P. Jackson died on 13 May 2001.
Personnel
management in
UK universities
405
limited personnel administrative capacity, which deals with routine
establishment issues'' (Keep and Sisson, 1992, p. 73). In practice many
universities used the term ``establishment office'' rather than personnel
department. Keep and Sisson then went on to suggest that those responsible for
personnel management had little standing or influence and their allegiance was
``towards the institution's administrative center, rather than towards the
academics who (were) the major potential clients of the service''.
The above description refers to what are now termed the ``old'' or ``pre 1992''
universities. The position differed in the ``new universities''. They moved from
local authority control, to independent higher education corporations, to
university status over the 1980s and early 1990s. Historically they had received
little funding to support research and although in the 1990s they were given the
opportunity to compete for such funding they were starting from a lower base.
All such institutions had personnel departments prior to incorporation and
most extended the role of such bodies afterwards. In part this was because they
were generally more managed institutions; in part it was because their staff,
particularly their academic staff, were employed under different terms and
conditions of employment. The departments themselves usually carried out a
full range of personnel functions (from recruitment and selection, to
consultation and negotiation to payroll administration) though as they were not
homogeneous bodies, inevitably there were differences.
The 1990s have seen further pressures on universities and further changes.
Some of these have been financial. The rapid growth in student numbers has
been accompanied by a deterioration in the unit of resource (the amount of
funding per student). The Dearing Committee report (1997) noted that the unit
of resource declined by 40 percent between 1976 and 1995. In some ways more
importantly, universities have been forced to compete more openly for the
resources that have been made available. The Research Assessment Exercise,
for example, has been used to target resources on the ``best performers''. In
some parts of the UK funding has also been linked to teaching performance and
everywhere universities have competed to attract the best students . Inevitably
this competition for scarce resources has led universities to put greater
pressure on their staff and to seek to more actively manage them. In parallel to
such moves, governments have sought to persuade universities to make more
use of the management techniques common in the private sector. They have
ranged from a greater emphasis on strategic planning to a swifter
responsiveness to the external environment (partly through greater delegation
of decision making to officers). Many of these initiatives were precipitated by
the Jarratt Report (1985).
The greater competitiveness for reducing finance, the emphasis on
performance management and the greater reliance on strategic planning have
all had consequences for the way that staff in universities have been dealt with.
In addition, over the same period a number of specific initiatives have been
taken over the management of staff all of which have led to pressure for an
enhancement of the personnel function. These have included the use of
To continue reading
Request your trial