How to restructure the right way, a lesson from the University of Kent

The challenge

At a time when the Higher Education sector was shifting under the weight of new financial pressures, changing student expectations, and evolving regulatory demands, the University of Kent chose to approach their challenge differently.

After several years of restructures and incremental cost-saving exercises, 2025 brought yet another requirement for immediate and substantial savings, but instead of repeating the familiar cycle of trimming budgets and reducing headcount, the University used the moment as a catalyst for deeper, more meaningful change.

Rather than asking “What can we cut?”, they asked the more powerful question: “What should our services look like if we designed them with purpose, value, and effectiveness at the core?” Lean Thinking became the lens through which they reimagined how work should flow, how teams should be structured, and which capabilities truly underpin their mission. The result was a shift from reactive cost-cutting to intentional service design, protecting value-adding functions and aligning new structures with both strategic ambition and operational excellence.

Georgina Randsley de Moura, Vice Chancellor at the University of Kent:

“In period of significant challenge, we needed to make complex decisions, but we chose to widen our vision not narrow it and to do our redesign with care and consideration. Whilst it was necessary to reduce expenditure, we also sought to recentre our university purpose, with students at the heart of our decision making. As we worked to strengthen services to build resilience, capable of adapting and continuous improvement, it was important to do so in an ordered and methodical way. Ad Esse were invaluable partners throughout this process. Their expertise and steady guidance enabled us to redesign with clarity and purpose, support our leaders, and everything was grounded by the objective of delivering value for our community."

Read on to see how they approached it.

Their approach

The University’s approach to restructuring Professional Services unfolded in four deliberate stages, each one creating the conditions for purpose-led redesign rather than a traditional cost-cutting exercise.

Stage 1

The first step was about setting firm foundations. Before any detailed design work began, the Executive Team had already shaped the top-level structure of Professional Services, identifying the directorates that would exist within it and defining a clear, one-sentence purpose for each. These purpose statements distilled the essence of why each directorate existed. For example, the Finance & Procurement Directorate anchored its remit around a simple statement: “To ensure the University remains financially sustainable, compliant, and supports growth.”

Alongside this structural clarity, the Executive Team established the practical parameters for the redesign. Budget envelopes were calculated for each directorate in line with the University’s overall cost-saving requirement, setting realistic financial boundaries for future structures. They also introduced a set of service design principles that would guide all decision-making that followed, principles that outlined expectations around management roles, layers, and the broader philosophy of how services should be shaped. These principles ensured that every conversation, from activity mapping to structural design, was grounded in a consistent framework.

Rachel MacPhee, Project Lead:

“Ad Esse supported the University in taking a new approach to delivering a redesigned professional services team that can respond and adapt to the changing HE climate. They supported us to design our services around purpose, value, and the real work our teams deliver—rather than around an arbitrary financial target. The design sessions provided the team with an opportunity to review activities in depth and consider how directorates can add the greatest value for their stakeholders . This approach meant the final proposals were purpose-led, and operationally stronger.”

Stage 2

With these foundations in place, attention turned to understanding the work itself. A series of consultation workshops invited staff from across Professional Services to identify every activity and function carried out within their teams. They were encouraged to map their work to the new directorate purposes and structures, making their contribution visible and ensuring nothing essential was overlooked. This stage created a comprehensive and honest picture of how services were currently delivered.

Stage 3

Armed with this insight, the University moved into the design phase. Cross-functional project teams were established, bringing together HR professionals, finance leads, service directors, and facilitators from our Ad Esse team. Working collaboratively, these groups reimagined how services should operate to maximise value for students, staff and other stakeholders. Activities were grouped into natural capability areas from which delivery roles emerged; management structures were layered on with clear purpose statements for each branch of the hierarchy.

Only once the logic of the design was sound was the Service Director tasked with pulling together a draft structure from this information, ensuring they right sized each component.

Stage 4

The final step focused on practical constraints and considerations, this was a largely managed by the HR professionals in conjunction with the Service Director, this process resulted in structures being refined to take consideration of constraints and special considerations, and each structure was then taken through formal staff consultation.

Michelle Scott, Strategic HR Lead:

“Creating purpose-built structures helped us align our people to roles more effectively and gave us instant visibility into where we needed to strengthen skills or knowledge.”

The result

The key benefit of this approach is that non-value adding processes, tasks or activities are redesigned out of the structure, giving staff back capacity to deliver value-adding work, and value adding functions and tasks are preserved. However, like any cost-cutting exercise, even one done the right way, there is a requirement to improve your processes in parallel to ensure capacity is freed up to allow those left delivering vital work are able to do so without burnout.

The University of Kent started this work the year before their latest restructure, rolling out a Continuous Improvement programme, upskilling its staff and improving its processes and performance. The university started this journey understanding that a full transformation of this type typically takes 5-10 years.

Following this restructure, areas were identified for more urgent service improvement and process redesign, the Student Life Directorate who had been through a great deal of change requested support first and have been engaging in a programme of waste reduction and process improvement since, supported by in-house members of their Continuous Improvement team.

If you’re about to embark on a cost reduction programme you can see more about this approach in our free webinar: watch it here.

If you’d like to discuss how to embed a Continuous Improvement mindset and capabilities in your institution, then drop us an email on hello@ad-esse.com.