Improving employee satisfaction through human resource management

This special issue of Perspectives brings together a curated set of articles on various aspects of human resource management (HRM), with a special emphasis on professional staff, that should inform good HRM in universities. There is a lot of discussion around ‘HR’ in universities – some good, some not so good. However, good strategic HRM, characterised by HRM aligned with strategic plans and HR Directors working together with the senior management team, can lead to effective policies, guidelines and practices for employee satisfaction and wellbeing. There has been a seismic shift in what HR do in the institution, from the old personnel function, to the human resource department, to the current people and culture iteration. These changes reflect the change to the HE sector, from a republic of scholars to a neo-liberal institution, or the corporate enterprise. Whatever your thoughts are on this, staff within our universities now operate in the world of budgetary constraint, and increasing pushes to increase productivity, efficiency and relevancy of activities. This may be ‘felt’ more by the academic staff, but professional staff are not un-affected by this change as they are often at the forefront of these changes, from financial or student number reporting requirements, quality assurance, the various research excellence frameworks that operate internationally, diversification of income streams, and indeed changes to HRM practices to support the changing directions of the sector.

This issue starts by exploring Quality of Working Life surveys used throughout the HE sector in the UK...