Why higher education needs to stop separating student and staff health and wellbeing

Prioritising health, safety and wellbeing (HSW) through HSW leadership, capabilities and systems will improve staff and student experiences.

In brief:

• Mass casualisation and documented spiralling workloads mean higher education faculties are facing increased psychosocial risk, leading to burnout and attrition.
• New regulations require institutions to assess, manage and control psychosocial risk, requiring systems uplift, including data monitoring and reporting.
• The sector has a unique opportunity to retain happier, healthier staff, attract more students and improve outcomes by transforming the approach to HSW.

According to the Australian Universities Accord, Interim Report, and the Support for Students Policy Guidelines, higher education institutions need to strengthen governance to deliver safer places to work and study, and consistently and reliably meet workplace obligations. The report acknowledges that many institutions have made great progress towards this goal. However, more needs to be done as systemic issues persist, including sexual assault and harassment affecting both students and staff. Such incidents are having a significant impact on the education experience.

Rising mental health and wellbeing concerns in the sector

Pandemic-related changes in the sector, including workforce casualisation, the move to online teaching, restructures and budget cuts have taken their toll on higher education staff. Job insecurity, unmanageable workloads and bureaucratic demands are leading to burnout and attrition. In the post-pandemic world, as international students pour back to study in Australia at a rate beyond predictions, will the situation only get worse before it gets better?

WorkSafe Victoria data not only shows that accepted WorkCover injury claims at universities is on the rise, but the cost of claims and the time to return to work is also increasing at an accelerated rate. Almost 20% of serious claims related to mental health in education are higher than pre-pandemic levels, with nearly 75% of these being submitted by women.

As a result, WorkSafe is focused on mental health and wellbeing in the sector, where regulatory non-compliance has exposed the need for institutions to structurally improve psychosocial safety.

Psychosocial hazards are work-related factors that can negatively impact mental health and wellbeing – factors such as high job demands, low job control, bullying and lack of role clarity. Addressing these offer higher education institutions an opportunity to:

• Improve the student experience – a positive employee experience can have a cascading effect on student experience, through safety and wellbeing.
• Reduce reputational risk – engaged employees support better market positioning via word-of-mouth reviews on social media.
• Get workers compensation costs under control – it is well documented that claims relating to mental health and wellbeing take longer to resolve and are more expensive than those relating to physical safety.

Engagement with higher education leaders indicates that they are aware of these challenges. Therefore, now is the time to expand the HSW function capabilities and capacity to affect real change. The need to comply with new regulatory requirements represents a unique opportunity to uplift the HSW function. Placing HSW on the strategic agenda will drive positive wellbeing so faculties can deliver the high-quality student experience institutions are promising.

How to embed HSW into your strategy

The renewed regulatory focus on HSW means higher education institutions need to go beyond just reporting and tracking lag indicators. The new and draft regulatory frameworks will require employers to proactively manage psychosocial risks by assessing and controlling identified workplace psychosocial hazards – and monitoring control effectiveness.

The incentive to make these changes is less about compliance and more about opportunity. Once leaders have the data to understand psychosocial risks, and what impacts or drives wellbeing across campuses, they can put in place wellbeing measures to reduce attrition and improve faculty morale. Universities should not only aim at making people feel safe. They must actually be safe – for everyone. This will require:

1. Approaching HSW as a whole of university strategy, removing siloes between staff and student HSW.
2. Uplifting current HSW processes, systems, capabilities and leadership.

These two steps will enable institutions to place HSW into the strategic sphere, one where HSW is a critical enabler of growth and quality education.

Take advantage of HSW through integration, simplicity, focus and agility

The future of HSW in higher education lies in a simpler, more flexible approach that considers how people and systems interact. The focus should be on:

• Integration – updating systems to integrate both staff and student wellbeing into combined processes rather than isolated ones, replacing linear hierarchies with collaborative networks (student services + HR + HSW), supported by digital technologies.
• Simplicity – making systems straightforward and people-centric to drive engagement and participation.
• Focus – prioritising HSW through increased focus, funding and monitoring. Psychosocial risk must become a key focus area, together with seeing the HSW opportunity to drive overall performance and improve staff and student attraction and retention.
• Agility – developing agile frameworks, supported by robust processes, that can adapt to the changing educational environment.

The higher education sector needs to place greater focus on attracting and retaining both students and a highly skilled workforce. The workforce rightly continues to demand a strong institutional culture that supports wellbeing and creates a better staff and student environment. By leveraging and transforming existing HSW management systems, higher education institutions will create a psychologically safe environment for everyone. This is how institutions will become employers of choice, attracting and retaining faculty talent who can provide an exceptional student experience.

To begin a journey of understanding HSW transformation, consider the following questions:

Chancellors

• What is the role of HSW in whole of university wellbeing?
• How do we better integrate HSW, HR and student engagement initiatives and outcomes?
• How can HSW help operationalise positive student wellbeing?

Executive teams and deans

• How can HSW programs help build HSW leadership capacity and sponsorship?
• How do we integrate staff and student policies and offerings?
• How can siloes be removed between Student Services, HR and HSW to drive a collaborative outcome-focused approach?

Functional heads (HR + HSW)

• What changes are required to processes and systems to improve data collection, reporting and monitoring?
• How can we remove duplication and find synergies between systems and programs or work?