Restructure strain is causing pain at UNSW with participants in a recent engineering briefing being told professional staff are doing their best in “new jobs and new structures” as part of the 2025 strategy. It was management boilerplate, apart from the bit about mistakes in structures, resources and role allocations in the new Operational Excellence model, which is now being reviewed.

Say what? OpEx is the shared services model being rolled out across the university with accompanying job cuts as the university centralises functions. The chancellery line is that the restructure involves a “difficult time” for people whose jobs are “disestablished” but “to achieve our strategic goals, UNSW needs to change and future-proof the way it deploys its professional services,” ( CMM August 29 2017).

So what’s with talk of a review? Perhaps middle management are misunderstanding what the leadership wants. Certainly a close observer of the restructure says staff are generally just getting “usual guff” about managing change. So on Thursday CMM asked the university if there is a review of OpEx and a spokesperson promised to respond, but hasn’t.