One industry that will be closely watched in this new environment is the $41 billion tertiary education sector. Racked by more than its fair share of casual and other job losses since the onset of COVID19 (some reports claim as many as 17,000 jobs lost) and already under scrutiny from regulators and unions amid claims of widespread wage theft, the university sector is at a crossroads from a staffing point of view.

What’s the casual problem?

In the past few years, many universities have been exposed to underpaying their casual workforce. In one case, the wages owed to casual workers at a leading university were recently discovered to amount to almost $9 million.

If this isn’t bad enough, universities are also grappling with a wider problem than wage theft.

Today’s universities are highly dependent on casual staff, but they sometimes lack systems and processes to maximise the skills of those staff, who often have widely differing specialisations, accreditations, availability and tenure.

This issue must be solved now, for several reasons. One, we are in a time of rising inflation, and therefore there will be pressure for higher wages across all industries, including the tertiary sector; two, in a time of rising costs, workforce satisfaction, will be key to driving productivity growth – so the universities which create environments where casual will want to work and be paid properly, will attract the more talented staff.

Thirdly, universities will be keen to ensure they have happy and loyal employees to help them reacquire the international students who will continue to slowly return to Australian campuses over the next few years and support universities' research and commercialisation agendas.

In summary, there is a lot riding on universities treating their casual well as they return to ‘normal’ in the next year or so. Now is the time for universities to fix any issues around workforce management if they are too proper and avoid the wrath of a new regulatory regime.

What can be done?

Universities have some issues in common with many other large employers, but they also have some challenges around workforce management which are specific to their sector – for example, they often have several thousand casual employees, on a range of awards. They also have to find a way to maximise a wide array of skillsets and roles, from lecturing, to research, administration, et cetera. Add in the fact that universities have long periods of non-face to face teaching, and the challenges of maximising how to allocate roles and schedule their casual workforce - and ensure they are happy and appropriately paid - is indeed a significant one.

Having worked with higher education clients for many years, and having established one of Australia’s most flexible workforce management software platforms, we recommend that in an environment of increased wages scrutiny, tertiary institutions consider these factors:

1. Build out the casual workforce management environment with human, and not just productivity, optimisation at its heart. To do that, universities should ensure that they are ahead of any award compliance issues. Their casual workforce environment should be compliance proof, mobile-first and future-ready. It should be designed for the complex, Australian WFM environment, and have an “Award Rules heart” to ensure continued understanding of complex workplace regulations, providing staff and management with the confidence that it can be easily adapted to changing needs.

2. Transform and scale the workforce management (WFM) environment. Universities are likely to need a lot of those casual workers back again this year, or next, as more international students return. To be competitive in a tight labour market, they will need to a WFM environment that can transform, and scale as needed. Deploying cloud-based, scalable and pay as you go WFM platforms should be industry standard, as they also help universities automate and streamline previously manual tasks.

3. Take advantage of innovation in human and workplace connectivity for WFM by deploying Smart Schedulingand analysis driven by Forecastingand Reporting. There are significant cost and efficiency gains to be made across the entire casual workforce value chain, from recruitment to retirement.

These are some of the actions which universities can take – and some are taking – now, to improve their wages compliance for casual staff, but also ensure those staff are allocated productively across the entire university environment.