Successful Universities in a Changing World: HR Drives the Future
The Association of Commonwealth Universities in association with HR Global Innovations, Universities Australia, and the New Zealand Vice Chancellors' Committee invite you to attend the 4th Human Resource Management Network Conference in Melbourne, Australia.
Universities around the world currently face many challenges, including:
- low levels of funding demands for new forms of staffing engagements to maximise flexibility
- increased focus on measuring performance of individual academic staff
- competition and sophisticated marketing for international students, essential to the financial wellbeing of many Anglophone universities
- competition in international ranking tables
- recruitment and retention of academic staff in an increasingly global market
- ageing of the workforce
- succession planning
- catering for a diverse socio-economic student base particularly in terms of age profiles, culture and expectations of what outcomes a university will offer them
- delivery of teaching and learning through multimedia which provides both opportunities and challenges
- impact of IT and other multi media on administration and teaching
- increased expectations of students
- technology enabled teaching
- student demographics (number of students available and age of students)
- faculty attraction and retention
- funding source of higher cost of university education (state v private)
- increased societal demand for knowledge as a differentiator for companies and countries place demands on universities while decreased budgets can limit what can be done
While the challenges may vary from country to country, it is clear that university HR systems, processes and staff must have the flexibility to adapt if they are to meet the core challenges of cost constraint, measurement and management.
As Human Resources managers we must understand the dynamics which drive universities, and know that at times, standard human resource management approaches require modification before being effective in higher education. Some elements of the academic culture lend themselves to best practice management theory, e.g. peer evaluation of performance and collegial decision making, but more needs to be done to support academic leaders to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
For further information, please visit: http://www.2010acuconference.info/index.html
