Voluntary severance at my university has damaged staff morale

In the past few years, universities across the UK have launched so-called “voluntary” severance programmes aimed at shedding hundreds of staff. The programme at my institution, though, explicitly threatens compulsory redundancies if too few staff “volunteer”. The alleged objective of the exercise is to create cost savings that can be redeployed in unnamed ways and improve individual institutional rankings in national league tables. This feels unfair when those rankings have no official status as a reliable measure of institutional and departmental success or failure.This policy has damaged staff morale. The threat hangs over all my colleagues’ discussions, departmental or otherwise. Our line managers reassure us that we will not suffer a direct hit, but the promises feel meaningless because the decision-making process is happening higher up. The intention of these tactics is clear: avert a panic or strike among staff until whenever the compulsory redundancies begin.