Ditching the agenda and prioritising the informal: Creating communities and collegiality in HEIs

In Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), formal divisional structures are dominant, generally characterised by top-down approaches that neglects the voices of staff despite purported commitments to kindness and collegiality, commitments often perceived by staff as a tick-box exercise. This paper explores how, within this context, informal networks that exist separate from formal divisional structures may foster enhanced collegiality and a positive sense of social identification. Through an extended ethnographic study involving observations, and gamified relationship mapping interviews, we examine academics’ lived experience of their formal and informal HEI-based communities. This research highlights how changes in culture may reshape practices and suggests that informal unstructured interactions are critical for cultivating a positive sense of community that existing formal structure fail to nurture. Through this research we seek to better understand how individuals experience their sense of belonging and collegiality within the institution and consider recommendations for a more humanised approach within HEIs.