A descriptive study of professional staff, and their careers, in Australian and UK universities

ABSTRACT

Professional staff total approximately 23% of staff in universities in the UK, which in 2014/15 was the equivalent of 95,870 individuals (hesa.ac.uk). With their increasing span of responsibility, it is surprising that there has been little research into the careers of these staff. This study, part of a larger careers study, highlights some key attitudes to, and needs from, their careers. Via a multi-method instrument, of which only descriptive statistics are presented here, it is shown that professional staff are motivated by an integrated set of needs attributed to traditional, boundaryless and protean career theory. It is also shown that professional staff overall are satisfied in their roles, but there is a mismatch between the desire for a career and promotion opportunities, and those forthcoming from their organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• professional staff
• careers
• career theory
• satisfaction
• motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michelle Gander is currently a PhD student at Murdoch University in Australia. Her PhD is taking an embedded mixed methods approach to understanding the career drivers of professional staff. Before her PhD she had a 16-year career at The Open University in the UK in a variety of professional staff roles. She is a member of the AUA and ATEM and is an Associate Editor of Perspectives and has written a book with two colleagues called Managing Your Career in Higher Education Administration.

Notes

1. Includes professional, clerical and manual staff.

2. Most Australian undergraduates do not undertake honours degree. Honours degrees consist of an additional dissertation unit which students must apply for and be accepted on to. In comparison UK undergraduates are automatically enrolled onto Honours degrees.

3. Professional staff are the ‘managerial, professional and technical’ staff category as defined by HESA.