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While the pandemic may be over, higher education’s hiring challenges remain.
Facing competition from private sector jobs with better pay and more remote work opportunities, some institutions are still grappling with how to attract qualified applicants for staff and administrator positions.
In a May 2023 microsurvey of employers by HigherEdJobs, 63% of institutions who responded indicated that hiring demand has increased “slightly” or “significantly” since 2022. However, 39% said they have seen a decrease in qualified applicants and 31% have seen a dip in overall applications. Respondents indicated that technical roles, those in IT, and facilities jobs like custodians and groundskeepers have been some of the hardest to fill.
The reasons why higher ed seems to have trouble attracting talent mirror the results of a September survey conducted by College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) about why staff and administrators are leaving: better compensation, a more flexible work schedule, hybrid or remote work arrangements, and promotion opportunities.
“I have seen remote work be a higher reason for folks leaving their roles or looking for something new,” said Tracey Pritchard, a human resources manager at the University of Iowa (UI). “Workplace flexibility is definitely on the forefront of people’s minds, which can be difficult to match in certain roles on campus.”
While many residential universities have established policies at the institutional or departmental levels for flexible work arrangements, certain roles, like those in student services or service jobs, can’t offer the same flexibility due to the nature of the posts. At UI, the present recommendation is that departments adopt a 60/40 policy, where employees can work on-campus for 60% of the time, and the rest remotely, Pritchard said. However, the human resources team defers final decisions to department leadership and works with them one-on-one to identify what makes the most sense for their team and individuals.
Pritchard, who works in the Office of the Provost, said while she hasn’t necessarily seen the quality of applicants go down since the end of the pandemic, the quantity of applications for many positions has.
Not surprisingly, it seems that recruitment challenges vary by institutional type and location, according to anecdotal responses from the HigherEdJobs survey. Several schools in rural areas had hiring challenges that were magnified by the pandemic, and those in larger metropolitan areas suffered from losing potential applicants to other industries. Meanwhile, public institutions were more likely to report their pool of qualified applicants shrunk post-COVID as compared to private, non-profit institutions. One potential reason why is that state systems often have in-state residency requirements since employees’ jobs are paid through state funds. During and after the pandemic, many people decided to make lifestyle changes and relocate to other states, which affected hiring and retention.
“As a public institution, our compensation cannot compete with bigger institutions and other industries,” said one respondent. “Our challenge is to attract more applicants to our positions.”
Another respondent fretted that candidates have been wanting to “negotiate huge salary increases” that are out of line with the pay ranges allotted for positions and that would put them ahead of what current employees are making.
Solving this hiring conundrum is easier said than done, as there are still large gaps between what universities are offering and what employees want. But the key to solving this problem could lie in the data. In the CUPA-HR survey, three-quarters of respondents indicated they were satisfied with their paid time off, health insurance, and retirement benefits. Might higher ed be able to leverage these selling points to attract a better pool of top talent?
Renee Duci, a departmental chief of staff and operations at the University of California San Diego, thinks quite possibly. Duci, whose team of 52 suffered from attrition in 2022 as employees relocated or sought jobs with greater flexibility, said the team has seen very little turnover in 2023.
“Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce and they are looking for different things than [baby] boomers were,” she said. “They are looking for things like work-life balance and flexibility, and it drove a lot of people to look for those opportunities when they were available.”
But what seems to be keeping people in their roles now is perks like good health benefits, pension opportunities, and generous vacation time, especially during the holidays when the university is closed.
“You can’t get that in a lot of other places,” she said.
Receiving a lack of qualified applicants is not a challenge that is unique to higher education, said Shane Dillon, founder of Cturtle, a company that works with the education sector and other industries to help them attract and retain talent. The pandemic accelerated talent shortages that were already happening, as baby boomers aged out of the workforce and there weren’t enough people to replace them.
“This is something that is affecting multiple industries around the world,” he said. “This is truly a global and demographic driven problem.”
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