Beyond bureaucracy: how to work with faculty professional services staff

Administration staff are often maligned: we are seen as the red tape, the bureaucracy, the computer that says “no”. In fact, well-run administration is the cog that keeps a university’s wheels turning, whether that’s by supporting teaching, research, human resources, or, as in our case, the academics.

We are faculty professional services (FPS) staff, providing administrative support for academics, including heads of school and directors, across schools and faculties. It’s hugely varied work, which might include organising field trips, processing exam papers, coordinating research conferences and careers events, helping with student placements and facilitating student worker and associate tutor contracts. 

And this is on top of day-to-day reception work, social media and diary management, printing, coordinating and minuting meetings, office space and accommodation management, procurement and catering.

Any good administrative process relies on communication, flexibility and cross-team coordination. For example, the preparation of a single exam paper takes collaboration between FPS, academics, internal and external examiners, our student academic services team and, finally, the printers. FPS staff must facilitate the progress, allowing time for each party involved to complete their part of the task, while ensuring that we hit the final printing deadline. And we do this for 30 main papers, not including resits and concessionary papers, over three exam periods in an academic year.

It’s an ongoing dance with faculty. One late paper has a knock-on effect for everyone concerned, adding to workload and stress levels. We often have more than one late submission and an inbox full of increasingly anxious – and sometimes irate – emails from colleagues. Each project we support has a similar network of involved parties, internal and external, all with their own priorities and deadlines. We must be well versed in diplomacy and allow for occasional private mutterings in the safe space of the office.

In the meantime, there are requests coming in via email and in person, often requiring immediate attention: an urgent printing job, a student needing directions, a visitor needing us to contact a staff member. Good administrators have rehearsed this choreography many times. 

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Communicating with faculty professional services staff

Good communication can be an exercise in artistry, depending on the subject and those involved. Should it be a professionally written email, a paragraph in the staff bulletin, an official meeting or a quick chat? Know your audience. Administrators aren’t researchers.

Keep it clear. Keep it concise. Make it easy to read. Or go and see your administration team. We always encourage academics to come and talk to us if they have a query or work issue. We are friendly, and don’t always bite! 

Certainly, for us, explanation of a lengthy project or the steps in a complicated process are best emailed, particularly if it includes instructions that might need to be referred to regularly. 

In our faculty, as well as hybrid team meetings, where we discuss individual and shared workloads, our main communication channel is Microsoft Teams. It allows us to discuss work queries, share school and university information, to chat casually, and, of course, complete the daily Wordle game, all accompanied by appropriate Gifs and emojis when needed. Microsoft Teams also connects us with the other FPS teams in our faculty.

Building a community that connects faculty professional services and academic staff

There are specific tasks that are shared across our faculty, for example the contracting of associate tutors. Cross-team working in this context benefits everyone, and it’s when we work together that we get the best results. 

The same kind of collaboration is also vital for projects like field course organisation, where a recent move to have regular catch-ups with the academic leads has made coordination much more streamlined, transparent and less stressful. This leads to far better professional relationships, which benefit the school community more broadly. 

In our faculty, we have a social and well-being committee to help with this. If you’re an academic looking to set one up, reach out to researchers, technicians, students and, of course, administration staff, who can help spread the word. Once you have your group of volunteers, hold a meeting. Bring biscuits, it helps. You can then brainstorm events: quizzes, bake-offs, Christmas gift swaps, a picnic, and so on.

Our committee reflects how academic and administrative staff – and students – can come together, removing hierarchies to create environments built on mutual respect and understanding. 

Ultimately, administrators are not just bureaucrats; we’re people. We are not here to stymie you; we are here to work with you, if you let us. 

Charlotte Price is a school manager at the University of East Anglia. 

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