None of this is an argument that professional services matter more than teaching and research. The two workforces are living through the same cuts, made on the same reasoning, and they succeed or fail together. This report exists because one of them has been examined less to date.
Amanda Owen-Meehan, Consulting Director, AHEP Consulting
Professional and support staff are the bedrock of higher education. Making up the majority of the UK higher education workforce, these teams keep institutions running, enable transformational student experiences, and drive organisational change every day.
Yet, their strategic contribution is too often overlooked in broader sector debates.
To bring this essential workforce into focus, AHEP Consulting has partnered with the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and TechnologyOne to publish a landmark new report: The Invisible Majority: Professional and Support Staff and the Future of UK Higher Education, already making waves across the sector and featured in Times Higher Education.
What the Report Explores
This report examines the systemic challenges facing professional services across UK universities. Co-authored by AHEP Consulting’s Lead Consultants Anna Verhamme and John Britton, featuring a foreword from Consulting Director Amanda Owen-Meehan and Consulting Manager Ben Rogers.
Rather than viewing support staff purely through the lens of overhead costs, the research highlights how underinvesting in staff development, capability, and modern digital tools creates long-term inefficiencies.
Key themes in the report include:
The High Cost of Short-Term Cuts: How rapid restructures and reduced training budgets often result in lost internal capabilities that universities must later buy back at higher costs.
Empowering the Workforce: Why sustainable institutional resilience relies on up-skilling staff, improving process design, and ensuring professional teams have a voice in strategic decision-making.
Smart Digital Transformation: How modern technology and joined-up systems can relieve administrative burdens, enabling staff to focus on high-value, impactful work.
Why This Work Matters
Championing the visibility, capability, and development of higher education staff is central to our ethos. This research by AHEP Consulting provides the sector with the evidence base needed to advocate for real, lasting change in how institutions value, support, and invest in their people.
We couldn’t be prouder of the team at AHEP Consulting for leading this research alongside our partners at HEPI and TechnologyOne.
Read the Report & What’s Next
The full report is available to read now on the HEPI website. Over the coming months, the AHEP Consulting team will be taking these insights on the road for a sector-wide conference tour—so stay tuned for dates, panel discussions, and key takeaways.
What we found is a workforce holding a great deal together with very little designed around it. Three-quarters of respondents report sustained high-intensity work, and while most still describe their day-to-day as good, that isn’t reassurance; it’s evidence of people coping under pressure that was never meant to be permanent. The decisions we take on this workforce now will settle what it can do for the decade after. The choice in front of every institution is simple: work out where the next cut falls, or design the workforce the strategy actually requires.
Ben Rogers, Managing Consultant, AHEP Consulting
0 comments on “Introducing The Invisible Majority: A New Report on the Future of UK Higher Education”