Changes to your services – What you may not know – August 2018 (PDF version)
This email relays the concerns of the CPSU NSW that the information available to the broader University Community regarding the proposed changes to key service operations of ICT, HR, Finance and CIS is extremely brief and anodyne in nature and appears to be designed to keep the full extent and effect of those changes from our Community prior to implementation.
The current information available to the broader University Community – the users of these services – can be found HERE.
There is now a link to the Draft Change Proposal appended to this site – after the CPSU NSW complained that no link was made available here!
While the recent major Faculty consolidation process identified many stakeholders across the University and, as a result, involved a number of well flagged Town Hall meetings seeking feedback from all University Community members, this current change proposal ignores the wider University community.
This is regrettable as it is arguable this change proposal has a greater number of stakeholders across the University than the Faculty consolidation process – anyone who needs the basic services of ICT, CIS, Finance and HR – so most of the University Community will be affected by this proposal.
Where is the wider staff consultation?
If the change commences as proposed, all staff enquiries that would normally go to the:
will instead go directly to a single call centre.
Upon the implementation of the new single call centre staff with experience and expertise in their specialist area will continue briefly to work in that area, however on page 7 of the Draft Change Proposal the following is reported:
It is anticipated this shifting over 6 months to a model where we no longer maintain “PSU Centric” teams.
What this appears to mean is that if you ring this call centre for a question regarding the functionality of your PC, for instance, it is quite possible you will be assisted by a staff member with a degree in Finance and no prior experience in dealing with ICT related matters.
Similarly, if you ask for assistance onboarding casual staff, you may be assisted by a staff member with a history of and expertise in Campus Infrastructure Services related matters.
And if you find that you are sometimes currently placed on hold while awaiting a service response, please consider the following statement made on page 9 of the Draft Change Proposal:
This proposed change creates a net reduction of 5 FTE [full-time equivalent] ongoing roles and a corresponding reduction in salary budget of $1.23m.
Not only will these changes have effects on the service levels you experience, they aim to create staff redundancies, and the CPSU NSW is concerned that many remaining staff will move from specialist roles to generalist roles. We are also concerned that this may represent a first step towards the outsourcing of these services to an external call centre.
We encourage all staff to consider the change proposal (the substance of the proposed changes is covered in the first 12 pages, the rest being Made up of draft position descriptions).
We also encourage you to email any concerns or feedback you may have to – currently the University advises that the feedback deadline for this change proposal is this coming Monday 3 September.
The CPSU NSW calls upon the University to extend the feedback period and pro-actively invite input from all University stakeholders, as this is a change process that will directly affect all University stakeholders.
Finally, this is an ongoing time of great upheaval and many coming redundancies at the University. If you are a Professional Staff member concerned by this, please find further information regarding how the Community and Public Sector Union of NSW can assist you at cpsunsw.org.au, of contact me via or on 0434 367 472.
Thanks and regards,|
Grant Wheeler.
