Presenting: Alma Scott-Buczak, Lisa Rex, Jill Kauffman
2024 06 HR Presentation for Open Session_Redacted Note that this presentation has been modified to remove any confidential information.
Turnover & the “Great Resignation” at Lafayette
HR Presented an overview of employment turnover for the past few years, sharing industry standards for both non exempt and exempt staff. With COVID and the “great resignation” that followed, there were significant fluctuations industry wide.
Looking only at FY22-23, the industry standard for :
- exempt (salary) turnover is 14.3% for LC 11%
- non exempt (Union) turnover is 15.2% for LC 10%
Voluntary turnover is seen as leveling off at 10.2% for 22/23. Lafayette is in line with job market place as a whole as far as turnover goes.
In exit interviews, HR asks about the reasons why people were leaving. For reference, not including coaching staff, which has a typical high turnover and a unique life cycle, all exiting employees are invited to an exit interview. Many retirees do not take the interview, however approx. 75% of other staff leaving the college do. They report:
The most common reason for leaving was being actively recruited by another company. Most were not actively searching
Specific reasons cited (in italics is information about how HR is trying to resolve some of these concerns):
- clarity about where and how to grow
–HR is working on finding ways to promote professional development in order to improve retention and help employees have a growth path here at Lafayette. - opportunity for more flexibility
–HR has worked to establish and to regularly review flexible work schedules, including work from home, when possible. Because we are a college campus, we will not ever be able to go fully remote, but processes can be in place to allow for flexibility as needed. - support for continuing professional development, including support for graduate school
––work is being done within HR and at the Board level to see how Lafayete can support extending tuition to grad school and other professional development - exhaustion from covering multiple roles for extended periods
—HR looking at how to not burn out people, fill job openings, adjust workloads as possible
perceived change in college’s culture, unhappy with leadership/management
A chart showing the actual count of Full Time Employees (FTE) now is not changed that much from 4 or 5 years ago.
Salaries and benefits
The largest budget line item of Lafayette’s budget is dedicated to salaries and benefits. That being said:
Average pay by role:
- union FTE $42,878
- non exempt FTE $49,283
- administrator $85,903
- faculty $118,356
The overview of new hires runs parallel to turnover rate so that there is not a significant gap between the number of voluntary terminations + job changes and the number of new higher.
At this juncture in the employee lifecycle, the age level of the faculty seems to be noticeable younger than that of administration and staff, particularly union roles. This is likely to do hiring patterns, as the college not that long ago expanded the number of faculty. Example is that currently more than 50% of the faculty is under age 50 where as more than 50% of union staff are 50 and older. In a few years we would expect to see this reverse as older union staff retire and younger staff are hired while the faculty remain (hopefully!) and age.
In a view of Lafayette salaries by category and the consumer price index (CPI), it’s evident that our salaries are significantly lower than the CPI.
The average time to fill a role for most departments is 100 days or more.
Questions and Answers:
Q: Our budget can’t support a 7% increase to match cpi, so what else are we doing to try an make up the gap??
A: HR works to offer different ways to offset the difference such as:
-helping fac/staff find affordable housing
-ways to offer services that support our community such as discounts at local merchants and ways to help your dollar stretch further
It was pointed out that HR does not set salary budget; they give input to budget committee to board and the Board ultimately makes decisions which HR then puts into place.
Q: We can see that the total number of employees has not changed much in recent years, but the number of students and projects are responsible for has. Are there ratios of people to students?
A: HR has done some industry sampling that includes comparing staffing to student ratios at Lafayette vs some of our peer schools and we are sort of in the middle — not over or under the average. The key is that the way we support more students and projects is through the use of technology and resources. For example, HR has improved their own methods of using technology to process some work more efficiently and thus has more time to work on metrics and other projects to review resources.
Q Does HR track extra tasks such as committees, added roles, etc (voluntold) that people have incorporated into what was already a full work day?
A: Not really. People basically self-identify additional roles such as committees and ad hoc project teams through the review process. It is expected that those open ended questions on the review form about how you support the community or the strategic direction are where you would include these additional tasks so that you are recognized for the work during the review process. HR only gets involved directly if someone brings it to their attention and asks for help..i.e. I am asked to do too much, what can be done?
Q: How many people actually respond to the request for exit interviews?
A: Generally, retirees rarely agree to an exit interview. Approximately 75% of other people leaving do participate, not including athletics. Coaches come and go pretty quickly and sometimes HR doesn’t even know right away.
Q: Is there a procedure for retention interviews?
A: There is not currently a process for this, but its something HR has discussed. The challenge is having time to manage that process. When it comes to identifying issues in a division, generally speaking, HR is is talking to senior leadership of division and not the individual staff…unless a person makes an effort to reach out to HR on their own.
When it comes to information revealed in an exit interview, there is not a formal process of going back to divisional leadership about feedback. HR tries to maintain confidentiality, and there is a concern that if they go back to a department with specific feedback, the feedback alone will identify the person who said it. Instead, they try to share blended data so that its not too obvious who said what in the exit interviews.
There is a process with new hires to get feedback on how it’s going, which is different that what had been done in the past.
Q: Are there interviews with people who shift between roles or divisions within the college?
A: There are not interviews, although hr does work with individuals who request help to do so
Q: Does HR track diversity trends and metrics?
A: HR does track diversity trends over time, and with Ernest Jeffries heading the Diversity Initiatives department, HR will work more closely to manage/monitor. HR has sat on previous diversity focused committees. Diversity trends and metrics are not something made public by most companies.
Q: What are HR’s project priorities
A: HR looks at how do we create more efficiencies? Technology? More shared roles?
Training is a project and has been for a while. Just note that HR does not do not skill training — ITS does skill training, HR is working to make sure teams are more efficient and productive together, working with LVAIC projects
behind the scenes projects:
– retirement plan – getting people to understand retirement benefits both new hires and long term employees working to improve efficiency and experience in the process
– changes to the retirement benefits like adding 1/2% of the 403b
– Roth options being worked on and will be rolled out for new fiscal year benefits
– Alma and Lisa are now both certified to administer the ‘taking flight with disc” personality style based program. DISC refers to dominant interactive support compassionate . Lisa and Alma are certified to administer these personality tests and then coaching how to work with people in your team by understand their.
– Tammy is working on communication through Lafayette today to get better info out to employees
– Jill doing work on wellness program and to get more people interested and involved in staying health
– Karen still working on metrics and disseminate the information
– DocuSign – Karen is the DocuSign tsarina and is best person to talk about complex routing and workflows
-tuition program – now there is a document about the benefit, and people can reach out to Karen or Lisa to get more information
Q: You’ve mentioned the .5% to retirement benefits. Does that mean that the Board has approved it?
A: Yes, the Board announced approval for merit program a 3.5 % pool for increases plus .5% additional contribution to retirement
Things to remember:
HR serves in advisory role to the Board. HR provide significant advice to senior leadership, but the Board of Trustees actually decides what changes will ultimately be made. Once the Board makes their decision, HR then works to implement changes.
They are working on how to provide graduate level programming; its happening outside of HR through the Board and the finance. HR has submitted several models to do it but it has to be financed first.
Q: In the old handbook, there was a piece about advertising new jobs to current staff before they go to the public. Is that still the case?
HR has recently begun working with a new agency to place job opportunity ads. New job are posted on the HR web site (https://hr.lafayette.edu/employment/job-opportunities/) There is a bot that picks up those ads and then pushes them to Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and Diversification automatically. Because of the way the jobs are shared, there is no guarantee that new jobs are posted to internal people first. (Staff who are looking for open opportunities on campus should check the web site daily if they want to see new jobs posted.)
Note that union jobs DO get posted internally first for 5 days. All college jobs are posted through interfolio, and an Lnumber is requested to see union jobs. All union jobs are posted first and will say “accepting internal applicants only” for the first 3 days. At the end of that time they automatically become available to everyone.
Reminder: new handbook has an acknowledgement page and each employee is required to sign electronically. required by end of June. HR will start contacting people later in the month of July.
Look for some lunch and learns coming up to review key areas of the handbook and to clarify some things which have changed.
slides will be shared minus some proprietary information.