Professional Services Affiliations

A professional service affiliation is only necessary when a staff member has a demonstrable and agreed connection to a college/portfolio and spend a substantial amount of their time doing specific work supporting the college/portfolio.

A service area (Portfolio/Division) may have 100 staff of which 6 may be located  in specific Colleges. These staff will have an Embedded professional services affiliation. 

There may be 10 staff in this service area in positions that directly support specific Colleges/Portfolios and these staff will have a Pooled professional service affiliation.

The remaining staff in this service are who provide support across the university are considered uni wide and DO NOT require a professional service affiliation. 

Staff with an affiliation (either embedded or pooled) to a College must have the agreement of the Director of College Services.

Professional Services Affiliations data and reports are used to provide insights for informed decision making, including:

• Reviewing and planning for effective and efficient levels of professional resourcing to colleges and portfolios throughout the year, including at the Annual Performance Accountability Cycle meeting
• Identifying, communicating, and working with specific professional services staffing groups
• Managing the professional matrix structure of the University
• Optimising resource usage across Flinders University.

All Professional Services Affiliation (as defined above) must be recorded in Workday, which is the source system for all types of affiliations.

A staff member’s Professional Services Affiliation should be updated when:

• they commence in a role,
• when they leave a role,
• when the function or activities associated with a role change,
• when the specific colleges or portfolios that the staff member supports changes,
• when the allocation of time across the specific colleges or portfolios that the staff member supports changes.

Note that when the staff member changes their fraction, the affiliation data should not be updated. The affiliation indicates the percentage of the role that is affiliated to each area and all affiliations should add to the total percentage of time that the staff member is providing professionally affiliated support services.

Changes to Professional Services Affiliations are the responsibility of the staff member’s supervisor and should always be discussed between the Service Provider and Service Receiver.

A Professional Service Affiliation verification process is undertaken twice a year. The two step process requires service providers to verify professional service affiliations for their areas after which a final check is undertaken by Directors of College Services who verify that all College affiliated staff details are correct.

Supervisors of affiliated staff advise their Director/Associate Director/Executive Officer of any changes to professional service affiliations, who will authorise and action the changes in Workday.

Directors of College Services can discuss changes to affiliations data with the Directors of the service provider.

The Director of the Portfolio that provides services should communicate the changes to service provision (staff and FTE) to the Director or College/Portfolio that the staff is supporting. 

The Service provider’s team is made up of:

1. Embedded - Staff that are allocated to support college /portfolio and are embedded in the college/portfolio (they are generally located ie have a seat in the college/portfolio they support)
2. Pooled - Staff that are allocated to support a college/portfolio; however they are located within their own portfolio.
3. Staff that do not require a professional service affiliations as they are not allocated specifically to support college/portfolio but are required to provide services across the university.

A staff member who is required to be included in distribution lists for communication purposes but does not have a Professional Services Affiliation, can be recorded in Workday as having a Professional Services Affiliation with 0% allocation. This will result in the inclusion of the staff member in distribution lists, but not show up in Professional Services Affiliations FTE in reporting.

Flinders Intelligence Portal (FLIP) provides reports on Professional Service Affiliations using data from Workday as of the previous day.

The data is sourced from and maintained in Workday.