Introduction

This chapter focuses on professional and support services staff and the issues of racism faced by them in their day-to-day work. Professional and support services staff play a crucial role in the day-to-day running of university business and systems. With the modernisation of HEIs, an agile workforce is considered crucial to the growth of HEIs and resilience.

At a university, strategic areas such as student recruitment employ large numbers of professional and support services staff, and this is noted as a major trend across the HE sector (Baltaru, 2019). Baltaru argues that this increase is a reaction to the increasing nature of internationalisation and marketing agendas for HEIs (for example Baltaru & Soysal, 2017). In order to meet the increasing operational needs associated with a larger student body, universities rely heavily on staff on fixed-term contracts (Baltaru, 2019). According to Batty (2020), more than 50 per cent of staff are typically in insecure employment. Currently, as a ‘substantial cost-saving initiative’, some universities are reported as not renewing contracts of fixed-term employees (Courtois, Lauder & Watermeyer, 2020). According to HESA1 (2021) 2019/20 data, there are no Black, 20 Asian, 5 mixed and 25 unknown employees classified in managerial, director and senior official posts, in contrast to 435 White staff. Of the 221,545 staff noted in professional occupations, 165,755 are White, 4,700 are Black, 21,930 are Asian, 5,010 are mixed and 19,225 are not known. The HESA data does not provide a full picture, indicating that only 131 of 197 HE providers opted into returning data about non-academic staff. Despite a large number noted in professional occupations, the lack of representation in non-academic services in manager, director and senior official posts is a concern.

Discussions and studies have circulated around employment in HE. Brown and Sessions (2006) have concluded that the type of employment contract has a strong influence on the attitudes and satisfaction of employees towards their jobs. More specifically, fixed-term employees are relatively less secure and optimistic about their professional future (Brown & Sessions, 2006).