University hires UK firm to improve culture

THE University of Otago has engaged a UKbased consultancy firm previously hired by the Southern District Health Board in a bid to improve its culture.

April Strategy is involved in an exercise branded ‘‘Shaping Our Culture, Together — He Waka Kotuia’’, led by the university’s HR department.

A university spokeswoman said the exercise evolved from planning carried out by the HR division several years ago, and was delayed by the implementation of the threeyear support services review which ended in 2018, rather than being prompted by it.

However the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) has said the mood at the university is at ‘‘a low ebb’’ following that review and others, with both academic and general staff worried about job security.

Human resources director Kevin Seales said the culture exercise was about establishing core values in terms of how staff worked together and supported students. It involved a staff and student survey which had been carried out between June and September, staff workshops, workshops in which staff listened to students about the values and culture they wanted, and training and improvement programmes.

Postworkshop analysis and decisions on how to implement resulting training or activities will be complete by early 2020, and the entire exercise would be complete by mid2020.

April Strategy was engaged by the Southern District Health Board three years ago to improve the culture there, the firm charging the DHB more than $150,000 for its services, and the firm has also been retained by other New Zealand DHBs.

Despite the work on its culture, the SDHB has come under fire this year due to allegations of a toxic workplace.

The university spokeswoman said April Strategy was ‘‘the only company offering this unique approach to culture, and they came highly recommended by other New Zealand organisations which have used them’’.

Final costs to the university of hiring April Strategy were not yet known, and the university would consider releasing them once the exercise was finished, she said.

TEU Dunedin organiser Phil Edwards said staff had experienced a period of ‘‘constant change and disruption’’ in recent years.

A TEU survey had found the support services review had entailed ‘‘three years of considerable uncertainty about the future . . . and a significant loss of organisational knowledge caused by redundancies, redeployments and workload and workflow changes’’.

Other university reviews in recent years have involved humanities, physical education, human nutrition and the centre for material science and technology, and the current review into the Department of Marine Sciences.